


Design Flaw

by rawthorne (noisette)



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Clones, M/M, Mentions of Underage Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-28
Updated: 2011-04-28
Packaged: 2017-10-18 18:27:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/191899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noisette/pseuds/rawthorne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The year is 10191. Peeta’s treacherous depths beguile with a pretty smile and eyes the color of the sea, but Gale never learned to swim and he can’t judge if the surf is shallow or profound, rocky or smooth and forgiving.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Design Flaw

**Author's Note:**

> Setting taken exclusively from Frank Herbert's _Dune_ series.

 

Arrakis. Dune. Wasteland of the empire and the most valuable planet in the universe, for it is here and only here that _spice_ is found. The spice. Without it, there is no commerce in the empire, there is no civilization.  
And he who controls it controls our destiny.  
– Princess Irulan Corrino, on Dune.

In the desert, the line between life and death is sharp and quick.  
– Zensunni fire poetry from Arrakis

  


The hand that holds his has turned to red peel by the time Gale glances down. It’s attached to a shiny arm that has begun disintegrating slowly and a shoulder bone that’s already peeking through the flesh. In the brief moments before the horror reaches its inevitable climax, a strange, beguiling wind brushes a shock of blonde hair out of blue eyes and twists a soft, generous mouth.

Gale’s dreams have never been a source of comfort, but it isn’t until he wakes drenched in his own sweat and shivering from the pressure of cracked lips against his ear that he understands why so many give into spice-mélange to ease their sleep. His hands are shaking as he grasps the carafe at his bedside, pouring water into a shallow cup and finishing without tasting the enriched minerals, the earthy scent of deep, off-world wells. It, like everything else in Arrakeen, doesn’t come from the place Gale once called home. This is what his people call progress.

His stomach feels settled enough that after a second cup he stops drinking and lies back onto the bed, where fine covers allow a thin breeze to smooth over damp skin. It’s not much of a caress, but Gale has a head full of hands touching him, kneading at his back and calves and nape, and he doesn’t want a refresher. Men have gone mad for less. He stares out the twin moons until they’ve slid from the sky, slowly reconsidering his own sanity. Satisfied, he gets up before the sun has broken over the edge of horizon to bathe and dress himself.

In the desert, wasting water on cleaning oneself was a sacrilege, but city affluence makes city habits hard to break and Gale can’t deny enjoying the trickle of warm water lapping in a shallow pool at his feet as he carefully shaves off his beard. He’s old enough to wear a man’s apparel, but the absence of a wife to keep his house and bring up his children marks him as incomplete. It is no matter; Gale no longer follows sietch law. Desert ways know nothing of the torch he bears, quenched by now to a dim flicker, or the dreams that haunt his nights, leaving him uneasy and unfulfilled, like a swindled traveler at the end of a long pilgrimage.

Gale is not in the habit of questioning his faith, so he dries off quickly and thinks no more on the subject of pale hands caked with mud or steel-tinted eyes – or body heat engulfing him in a soothing chokehold.

His own hands have known real toil and real death, but he was not the one chosen by fate to honor his sietch in battle. This is the burden Gale has carried with him ten years after the battling is over and done with, watching from the balcony of the training house as boys his age and younger learn to use their bodies as they would a crysknife. It hasn’t been easy to drive them from the dunes and into the city, but it is here that they are needed most, where the throne of Everdeen is under constant threat.

He counts it as good fortune that none of them are blonde and blue-eyed or well-fed and lifeless at the bottom of a shallow ravine.

“You wish you were there with them.” Katniss has always been quiet on her feet, whether on sand dunes where a single tremor could call monsters from the deep or in the arena, as her traps, the ones he taught her to make, snatched life after innocent life.

Gale offers her a shrug and a smile, neither of which are wholly genuine. “I wish they were better so they wouldn’t need me to keep watch. We’ve sent our best fighters to garrisons the ‘verse over. Now all that’s left to keep us safe are children better used to slingshots and knives than the guns we’re putting ni their hands.” He hates the edge of disappointment that slips into his voice whenever he mentions the war; he backed the council after Katniss ascended to the throne and he led a number of surges himself. But ten years is a long time to remain intractable on any policy and they’ve lost too many people for false confidence. His fingers skim the invisible mesh grid which shields the viewing balcony from the arena. “I imagine a few of them are decent with a bow, too, for what it’s worth.”

“More than a few.” Katniss tugs her shawl around her one handed, though it’s been years and she’s in full control of both arms. “I handpicked them myself, remember? The pride and joy of the Empire… or whatever propaganda we’re selling these days.”

Disappointment is contagious in the rats’ nest of Arrakeen, where sycophants and acolytes are far too common.

“They are good at what they do.” Gale watches the trainees out of the corner of his eye, willing them to prove him right. A number are practicing with bayonets, now, and doing a decent job of it. “And they’ll lay down their lives for yours. That’s what we need from any bodyguard. The rest…”

Touchy as it is, the subject flounders to silence as the pitter-patter of heeled shoes ascends to the terrace. The contrast between the sisters is telling; one has the makings of a queen but dreams herself a healer, while the other hasn’t shed her mourning clothes in ten years. Of the two, Gale can’t quite decide which is better suited to the task of ruling an empire made up for warring factions, greedy thugs and superstitious toadies.

“Am I interrupting?” Prim’s soft mouth twitches into a smile, inviting without demanding an answer. “I saw you and I thought—”

“That we were having a tryst in full view of impressionable young minds?” For all that she is colder and supposedly world-weary, a much softer version of Katniss peeks through whenever her sister is present. She beckons with open arms and even takes Prim’s hand.

Gale stifles any lingering jealousy. He can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times that Katniss has touched him since they were children, but he is not Prim and he doesn’t warrant the same affection. He’s just a glorified general, old beyond his years and guilty of far more sin than Prim can dream up through spice-addled sleep. In this, he and Katniss are much alike.

“You’re always welcome to interrupt,” he promises Prim’s warm laugh, barely seeing the rest of the girl. “We’re admiring the troops.”

“Ah, they’re good, aren’t they?”

Prim peers over the edge, but Katniss holds her back with a hand on her shoulder. This is what the council and the pseudo-religious Bene Gesserit Sisterhood can’t see: Katniss will do what it takes to keep her sister safe, whether it means volunteering to fight in her place in the arena or leading a revolution against abusive government and installing herself as Regent in their place. If she hasn’t yet followed the will of the people to allow her sister to rule, it’s out of love rather than any thirst for power.

Gale turns back to the sound of weapons being discharged into dummy targets. “Not yet… but they will be glorious.” The Empire needs them to defend the throne. Gale needs them to ease his sleep of at least one brand of nightmare.

***

Peeta knows he has to kill him long before they meet. It’s a lesson set deep in his bones, something he has reflected on from the moment he gained control of his dreams and assumed ownership of his memories. He isn’t entirely sure they’re all his, but then the Tleilaxu Masters don’t make any attempt to hide his muddy past.

“Do it right this time,” they say, their elfin heads bent over his training roster and their minds elsewhere. They’ve watched him kill the holographic projections dozens of times, yet they’re never quite satisfied. They tell him the real thing will move quicker. Aim to kill.

They don’t tell him Gale Hawthrone is a boy slightly older than he remembers, one who stands quietly to the left side of the Regent’s throne as if he’s just another of Her Majesty’s guards. The palace at Arrakeen is hot and damp, the sweet-salty smell of perspiring bodies as familiar to Peeta as the taste of his own blood after a particularly arduous training session. Only the desert natives look as if they belong and yet they, too, shuffle uncomfortably when the Bene Tleilax alchemists enter the hall.

It takes Peeta a moment to understand that he is the source of their unease. Whispers in the wings catch at his ears like mockingbird cries in a thick, green forest. _Abomination,_ they call him. _Blasphemy_.

The Tleilaxu Masters walk on, Peeta trailing their delegation as they march up the long road to the imperial dais. For such a long trek, the payoff is surprisingly disappointing. Peeta has seen holograms of the Regent, but he’s been expecting someone imposing; someone with poise and gravitas, a woman-child whose finery alone denotes her near-divine title. What he finds is a thin girl with scarred skin shrouded in a brown-black tunic, her single braid hung over a slender shoulder and tinged with white.

“We honor the sacred throne of Everdeen and its esteemed messenger, the Regent Katniss.” The delegation sweeps into a low bow like school children at the end of an end-of-year play. Peeta joins them, the folds of his robe fanning around him on polished floors. He keeps the cowl about his head despite the stifling heat; he hasn’t been told to remove it for all that everyone seems to know what he is already.

A thunderous voice echoes from the crowd: “This will not be borne! The Bene Gesserit will not stand for the repugnant methods which the Tleilaxu have long used to defy—“

“Silence!” The Regent’s voice is smooth and ill-fitting, weighed by a duty too large to bear on girlish shoulders. Peeta digs fingers into his palms to steady the urge to offer his comfort. She is not his wife, though he remembers plans once made to that effect.

She made them with someone else.

“Reverend Mother Johanna Mason will remember her place. We owe much to the Tleilaxu, from the sligs in our farmyards to the Face Dancers who do our bidding. We will hear their tender.” A wave of her wrist gifts the Masters with the silence of the room and the attention of a thousand eyes.

The whole universe is watching as Peeta is brought forth and instructed to unveil his head. He knows he is not imagining the collective intake of breath that reverberates around the hall. In it are painful memories and poison arrowheads, midnight strolls between the glares of jealous twin moons and the lost mutterings of lovers that could be but never were. Gale’s eyes are on him, too, but he holds a perfect poker face.

“Our quest is complete. Many years we have prepared for this, toiling restlessly in the darkness of our single world, with limited resources and dwindling support. True perseverance is the mark of our devotion to the throne. We offer Your Grace the gift of life in the restored form of Peeta Mellark, victor in the arena and friend to our most holy Regent.”

Blue-gray eyes bare Peeta’s soul to the judgment of all in attendance, but it is the Regent who speaks, vocalizing what her loyal hound must be thinking: “He is ghola.”

“He remembers _everything,_ Your Majesty.” Peeta’s minders are good salesmen. They edit out his questions, his uncertainty; the degree to which he fears he might be living someone else’s life rather than his own.

The Regent leans forward in the gilded throne, her hands gripping carved lion heads. She is a smallish thing, with dark hair and silver eyes, but to Peeta she is meant to be the most beautiful woman alive. “Everything? How is that possible? His body was destroyed…”

“We were able to collect a handful of cells from his battledress. He was endowed with full memory shortly after awakening from the tanks,” a muttered invective from the Reverend Mother is hard to miss, though no one seems eager to acknowledge her impudence, “and we are confident that he lacks no recollection of the incident which took his life. It seemed… inappropriate.”

“Inappropriate?” Johanna Mason appears as a thin, willowy figure with a wide mouth and sharp eyes. Peeta can feel her hatred even as he remains stiff under the Regent’s gaze. He begs her to recognize him, to accept him into her heart. Perhaps in time, he will remember what it was to love her and they will continue where they left off. Life eternal is the Tleilaxu promise, yes, but hope is all Peeta can grasp with his battle-worn fists.

The hall devolves into chatter and heckling. “He is a clone,” cry the Bene Gesserits, Johanna Mason at their helm. “He is a man,” protest the Tleilaxu. And between their crowing voices lies the silence of the Regent’s impenetrable stare, her skin carved deep with desert scars and tear tracks like rivers run dry.

“Silence!” She has a good cry in her, Peeta remembers as much. A smile tugs at his mouth to hear her command the room without endearing herself to anyone. She makes no concessions. “We will not allow our hall to be polluted with such conduct. The ceremony is adjourned.”

It is the mark of power, rather than good leadership, that a single word can cause the commotion which ensues at the Regent’s command. The loyal hound is out from his lowly position in a flash, gesturing to the sabre-armed guards and stepping forth to herd protesting nobles from their stalls. Chaos ripples around granite and marble, a hundred voices competing for place among the sounds of rushing footsteps.

“What of the ghola?” asks Gale Hawthrone, his long knife drawn, his eyes pinning Peeta where he stands.

Katniss shoots them a glance over the shoulder, her padded armor like a second, lighter skin to hide the olive tones beneath. “He stays.”

There is a moment, brief and tenuous, when Gale’s concentration slips to the men and women who, unlike Peeta, have failed to receive the imperial pardon. If ever there was a chance to kill his rival, it would be now, as Gale brushes past close enough to touch and strangle and bash into the floor until his blood is running over Peeta’s fingers. He steels himself for the attack, muscles poised and fists ready--

\--and fails to act.

He is still immobile, tense and hot under the cloak when guards come to escort him from the hall. His malfunction renders him mute for the length of the journey, though it is not until he finds himself behind closed doors that he understands his good fortune.

The Regent has permitted him to remain in the palace. He may yet get another chance to complete his mission.

***

Gale trusts only himself to see the Bene Tleilaxu safely off the planet, but that isn’t to say he is alone at the docks as their ship takes off. Tensions always run high when there is inter-faction bickering, though fires are seldom kindled over as sensitive a subject as human cloning. In reference to the Regent, no less— Gale’s thoughts meet a wall when he considers the choice that has been made against every sensible edict for the past two thousand years. There are some traditions that should never be broken.

He rounds the quay only to come face to face with the Bene Gesserit delegation, their blue-in-blue eyes trained on him with the accusing focus of predators in the wild. It’s a disconcerting sight.

“I had no notion you were so attached to the Tleilaxu that you’d come wish them a safe trip.” The edge of suspicion can’t quite be held back, but Gale makes an effort to control himself. He isn’t in the business of starting wars or taking sides. He leaves that privilege to his Regent.

“We are glad to see them gone, but would be gladder still if they took their trash with them. They seem to have forgotten something on Arrakis.” Johanna Mason arches her penciled brows into a crown of braided hair. She was once victor and warrior, but two entries into the arena have left her as broken in mind as many of her peers are in body. She speaks for the Sisterhood now because she’s lost her own voice. No other part of her survived rehabilitation. “We would have thought you would see eye to eye on this matter.”

“I follow orders. Nothing more.” Like any good soldier, Gale makes to evade discussion of his superiors’ decision-making skills.

A clawed hand on his arm aborts the movement. “We know you have the power to decide his fate. Why won’t you use your influence with the Regent to be rid of him forever?”

It’s a tempting thought, but it runs counter to everything Gale has come to believe in. Katniss has the deciding vote on the ghola’s life. And Gale is happy to let any jealousy he might have felt lie quiet at the back of his mind, where it is already tangled with so many unspeakable desires and fears and, worst of all, hopes. Old wounds need not be reopened when the fresh ones have yet to heal. He frees himself slowly but decisively, wresting Johanna’s hand from his arm. “Oh, I’m sure there’s more of his DNA in a petri dish somewhere. The Tleilaxu will want insurance in case we destroy their first model. Wouldn’t you?”

“We do not toy with the sanctity of human life!”

“No,” Gale agrees, his mouth shaped into something that can’t even begin to approach a smile, “you merely decide which lives are more sacred than others.”

***

From the palace window, Peeta has an excellent view of the gardens. He observes the comings and goings of servants, notes the patrols that regularly comb the distant areas of the grounds for stragglers and amuses himself by plucking each memory of his time in this gilded cage. The one about the stolen bread is his favorite; goaded as he was to indulge in thievery by the same woman who now preaches the values and laws of her predecessors.

And she _is_ a woman. No longer the seventeen year old he helped ascend to victory in the arena, Katniss Everdeen has since become a military general, a religious figure and a symbol of renewal for a planet long starved for attention. She has murdered at least two people to ascend to the throne, each death propelling her vision higher than the last.

“Do you think I’ve changed?” She lets herself in through a panel hidden behind the wardrobe, one of the many secret passageways they weren’t supposed to know about as desert youths housed in plush comfort before being thrown to the wolves. She stands taller now and so she has to stoop to escape the cobwebs. There is a spider in her hair that she plucks out with gentle fingers only to crush in the palm of her gloved fist. “I’m sure I must have.”

What joy Peeta expected to find at seeing her again wars with confusion. “You’re older,” he notes, though it doesn’t offer much by way of answer. Of course she’s older; he’s been dead ten years. “Also better at addressing crowds.”

Her laugh is still the same: a mere accident of a sound with a foothold in derision and surprise each. “Not hardly. I’m better at pretend games, that’s all.” She brushes the gloved hand through her hair, arranging it behind the ear. It’s the one that bled so profusely when she was wounded in the arena. Peeta has read the reports and knows it’s been repaired since. The Tleilaxu are masters of biotechnology. No wonder the Regent feels indebted to them.

The sudden urge to ask her questions seizes Peeta by force. He has the beginnings of a lifetime in her shadow, but he has missed almost eleven years of being at her side. Is it enough to love the person she used to be?

“Gratitude for allowing me to remain in the palace. I did not think—“

“Nor should you.” Katniss cuts him short. “My ministers wish you gone and there are profound concerns about your loyalty.” A palm stops the wave of protest already rising from the ghola’s chest. “Your intentions are not your own. You must know this if you know anything about the Tleilaxu. No gift of theirs is freely given.”

“So I am to wait while you pass judgment on my _intentions_?” The bed is silk and sheer canopy. Stretched upon the sheets, Peeta feels like a slave in tales of old; one ensnared by the very woman he once loved. It should be an epic poem, in song and dance, with flames and dancers aplenty. Instead, all he has is the blue-in-blue of the Regent’s measuring glare.

She has not moved to approach him and she does not attempt it now. Perhaps she is disgusted by him. Peeta expects the treatment but not the raw hurt it brings. “I have made my ruling. You will remain in the palace, under lock and key until my advisors are satisfied that you are no threat.”

“Guilty until proven innocent, then, is it?” His impudence is served with a roguish smile. So, too, was the flirtation they once exchanged in the open air of the arena. “How can I convince your advisors when they have decided I am culpable already? They will second-guess my every breath.” And, with Reverend Mother Johanna Mason at their helm, they will proclaim him traitor and abomination, viper in the empire’s bosom. They will know who to call on for his execution.

“Gale has agreed to be your shadow for the coming weeks.” Katniss is wise to wait for surprise to pass before continuing. “I have decoys and soldiers to defend me, now, and his skills are fallen to disuse. Persuade him and my council will have no choice but to grant you amnesty.”

It’s as impossible a thing as airlifting himself out of this life and into the one he abandoned ten years ago. Peeta gnaws the inside of his cheek to force down the curse he wishes to let loose. “Then you, too, want me dead.”

For the first time since slipping into his cell, Katniss has the temerity to appear shamed. Under the vision of that strong, military woman beckons a scared little girl on a cold, dark night. “No. Never.” When she takes Peeta’s hand, her grip shocks him with its chill. More than an ear was lost, then, in the arena, and for whatever reason, his old friend has chosen to replace the lost limb with a mechanical one. Hence the glove. “I rule in my sister’s name. She’s the one who fits the Sisterhood’s bizarre prophecies and hollow calculations, and she’s the one who will suffer if I fall out of favor. Do you understand? I can’t create dissidents in my own stronghold.”

He understands that much has changed for the girl who defied a tyrant, yet for all the power she wields, she is still a pawn at the mercy of others.

“We should have left when we had the chance,” Peeta offers in exchange. “When they pulled our names in the reaping…”

Her expression shutters at that. Her hand releases Peeta’s. “Stay alive. For both our sakes.”

All he can hear is: _unlike the last time I put my trust in you._

***

What’s he supposed to do, wonders Gale, defy the Regent and play into the hands of soothsayers? Or is his lot that of the fool who makes way for his rival, time and time again, like some mindless merry-go-round, the scenery flashing by, while he waits for someone to pry him from the spinning dais?

It’s taken him years to recognize he’ll never have a chance with Katniss, that she’s made for bigger things than romance and sietch life, yet here is Peeta returned from the dead to turn her head again and make Gale seethe in the confines of his private chambers. He’s promised to give Katniss his thoughts once he’d spoken with the prisoner—whom he won’t call Peeta anywhere but in his mind, because he isn’t, not really, and to endow him with that name is to admit defeat before the battle’s been fought—but incentive is lacking.

A servant knocks and enters his room with a tray of city meats and cinnamon-scented desert brew. She is pretty and lightly tanned, her head ducked so Gale can’t see if her eyes bear the traditional blue-in-blue of spice addiction.

“Thank you,” he breathes, ill-arranged as he is on the edge of the bed.

The girl looks from the crysknife and whetstone in his hand to his eyes—hers are blue, but not yet fully tainted—and nods without speaking. She could be sixteen or so, her age impossible to determine beneath a shapeless, provincial garb and studied silence.

Gale toys with the desire to make her linger, perhaps to use her until his thoughts have arranged themselves into clear reasoning, but he can’t see past her evident desire to be out of his chamber and so he lets her go. His fingers manipulate knife and stone with rhythmic precision until the doors have closed, then both are tossed to the bed. It’s times like these that he misses the sietch more than he thought possible. Even if Katniss was more boyish then than she is now, at least Gale had other admirers and a head full of free thoughts to keep him company.

He picks at his dinner over memories of pretty girls with braided hair and boys who played rough—and one who didn’t—the end result a wasteful exercise that neither settles his stomach nor helps pacify his mind. The capital does not invite its residents to calm; the palace walls have known far too much bloodshed for ghostly whispers to ever fade.

It’s late in the day and the sun is crawling over the edge of horizon, leaving behind slivers of urgency Gale must take into account. The longer he waits, the higher the pressure on Katniss to come to a decision, and whatever she ordains will be done with no small amount of grief on her part. He owes her the duty of sincere counsel and friendship.

He owes her his family’s life, not to mention his own.

Suffering through a few hours with the ghola is a small price to pay.

***

In a fit of desperation, Peeta throws himself at the door secreted behind the armoire. He pulls at it for an eternity that turns out to be eleven minutes by the counting of the clock ticking silently beside the bed, to little avail. His fingertips protest the treatment, but his head aches even worse. He has been locked in solitary for thirteen hours, with no food to eat and only the pitcher of evaporating water for company.

At least the room has an adjacent bath, so he has not been forced to relieve himself in the corner, like a prison inmate in some barbaric land. Still, loneliness and boredom have begun to grate upon his nerves. When Katniss said she would allow Gale to play interrogator, Peeta understood her to mean within minutes, maybe an hour. The wait makes anticipation that much harder to bear.

If found guilty of Tleilaxu treachery, Peeta expects he will be disposed of quickly and quietly, his remains returned to sender. Katniss won’t risk making a spectacle of such worthy allies. No other alternative presents itself.

Peeta drifts into sleep by accident. He has no notion that he’s dreaming until the palace window shows him a garden littered with the bodies of men, women and children all stabbed clean through with fire-tipped arrows. Some have been pierced mercifully, through the heart. Others were struck down while running from the slaughter. They are all unarmed and they are all, unmistakably, the spawn of the capital.

His awakening is brutal, but much appreciated. Less so is the surprise of blue-in-blue eyes as Gale perches above him. “Tell me,” invites the loyal hound, “is thrashing in your sleep something you used to do before you died or is it more of a design flaw that cropped up when they remade you?”

The instinct is just as sharp, though Peeta expects it this time. He doesn’t go for the throat, he merely scrambles backwards, putting some distance between them and focusing on his breathing. He was a decent tactician, once, under the right supervision. Gale is just another obstacle. “What do you want?”

“What do you think?” A shock of black hair obscures the other man’s eyes, the length of it a symbol of wasted years and affectation. Peeta envisions lighting it on fire. “I’ve been told to figure you out.”

“Don’t flatter yourself. I hear they’re giving the job away to just anyone.”

Gale snorts, the corners of his mouth flickering into a smile. “Like any ticking time bomb.” He give Peeta space enough to drag himself off the bed and splash water onto his face, neck and chest. The clock on the side table marks the hour; Peeta was asleep for four. That puts his captivity at seventeen hours so far. It’s only the beginning.

Peeta claims a straight-backed chair for himself, putting up his foot on the edge of the bed and waiting, patiently, for interrogation. It’s a strange position to be in; these rooms were once the height of luxury, made to house champions who excelled in the arena and the perverts who would use them for pleasure or profit. Now they are prison cells and guest accommodation, depending on the need. Peeta’s black clothes stand out among the beige and terracotta tints, but he was never one for vanity and he won’t start now.

Across from him, Gale might as well be a relic of man. His weapon alone gives him character; the rest is armor and leather, snaking scars writ into his arms and punctuated in dark ink. Peeta can’t understand what Katniss might see in him.

“You’ll want to rethink that,” Gale warns softly. “You reach for my crysknife and you lose any chance of proving me wrong.”

Peeta doesn’t bother conceal the sneer or the laugh that follows it. “I don’t care what you believe.” _And I wouldn’t need a sabre to kill you._ “You don’t scare me. I know who I am.”

“And who’s that?” Arms that have been marked in war curl over Gale’s chest, his back to the armoire. “Peeta Mellark, the baker’s son? The unlikely gladiator? Or the assassin posing as friend, come to tip the balance of power in favor of the Bene Tleilax?”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“On which of them scares you more, _Gale_.” There have been no introductions, but then none are needed. Hunting partner and best friend to an imperial Regent is enough to recommend any man. Peeta remembers watching them escape the desert sietch when they were children, longing to follow where they led but too fearful of his parents’ wrath. They rode worms together and hunted wild game, bonding over snares and death like true predators. And when Peeta died, who but Gale was there to console Katniss for the loss of her pretend-lover?

No, not pretend. It was real. Peeta remembers that to be true.

“You’re right about that.” Gale’s answer is an unexpected, jarring alarm. “One of you will try to take her away from me. Let’s figure out which.” The scrape of a chair on the rough, sanded floors is nails-on-a-chalkboard loud in the empty room. “Let’s start with the Tleilaxu. What do they want?”

“Besides offering me to the Regent? I don’t know. They don’t answer my questions and I know better than to ask.”

“So you’re not curious? You don’t wonder what made them openly defy the imperial decrees on cloning self-aware human beings?” Therein lies the difference; Face Dancers are tools made for hard labor and servitude, no better than robots in human form. Gholas are rumored to merit the higher purpose of personhood. Evidently, the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood regards this as sacrilege. Any antiquated religious order would.

And so it begins, each question layered upon the last, each more tendentious than the one preceding, until Peeta is on the verge of shouting and throwing his hands, and Gale is at the door, waving off the guards who have come in.

Once they are gone and the doors sealed shut once more, Gale tries a different tack: “What do you remember about the arena?”

“Everything. I remember the reaping, the naib of our sietch sending us off to bring honor to the tribe… A lot of nonsense.” Peeta can’t help the flicker of pleasure that blooms at seeing Gale’s discomfort. Poor bastard actually believes in the primacy of the free men and women of the desert. He thinks that their methods and prophecies have meaning for the rest of the world. “I know what Katniss wore when we stepped into the arena and how she fought--“

“Do you remember how you died?”

It’s a low blow, but Peeta faces it head on. “No. The Masters said I wouldn’t. One minute Katniss was with me, trying to get the bandage around my shoulder and the next, I hear gunshots and she’s gone. Guess it only,” his vague gesture encompasses the prosthetic arm Katniss now uses in lieu of a real, biological replacement, “damaged her arm, not the rest.”

Gale waits a beat before speaking. “That bullet only grazed her ear.”

“What?” Peeta’s mind strains to recall the moment when his partner and friend nearly lost her life for helping him. “No, I remember how it went. She was shot and then everything went dark, so I must have—I must have died.”

That’s how he’s reflected back on the incident in the months since being restored to full awareness. It’s the only account that makes any sense. But Gale is shaking his head, slowly, as if speaking to an idiot child. “We have footage. Katniss lost her arm much later, in an explosion. Don’t you remember?”

Peeta forces himself to hold the other man’s gaze. “No. I don’t.”

***

Something is afoot. Gale works through the details of his conversation with the ghola alone and with Katniss, but he keeps from her the discomfort that he saw writ so clearly on Peeta’s borrowed face. He wishes he knew what to make of it; being aware that the Tleilaxu excel in their work is not enough to prepare a child of the sands for handling their latest design.

He watches him while they eat, Peeta bent over his plate with a quizzical eye and Gale trying to muster up an appetite, the occasion as bizarre as the hour. New methods, Katniss had called them, to best crack the cypher.

Gale’s yawn attracts attention and the curve of a boyish grin from Peeta’s spice-stained lips. “You didn’t have to get up so early for my sake.”

The urge to reply with a sharply raised finger is easily set aside, but the sentiment lingers. Gale tells himself he never liked Peeta much when they were children growing up. A baker’s son attracted too much attention in the sietch and he only doubled in popularity once he entered the arena as Katniss’ counterpart. Had he not died, perhaps he would be the Regent’s consort, now, and Gale would be his subject rather than his jailer.

“There’s a lot of work to be done and not enough hours in a day to do it all.” Gale scratches at his temple, pushing his own plate aside on the swiveling table. “The naibs expect to see Fremen law imposed throughout the empire. What’s left of the Great Houses expect domestic jurisdiction in return for fealty. And the Bene Gesserit demand exemptions from every treaty, to best preserve their way of life.” It takes a moment for Gale to realize that he’s sharing intimate, private thoughts with a would-be assassin, but by then it’s too late to take back what he’s said. All he can do is brush it aside, catalog the mistake as a casual slip.

Peeta won’t let him. “Isn’t that what the Regent is supposed to do? Or better yet, her advisors? I’m beginning to think all they care about is keeping me locked up tight until I go mad with boredom.”

Don’t speak to me about Katniss, Gale thinks viciously, when I was there for the long trek to the throne and you were—well. Death is a strange thing to hold against a man, even one created from the ashes of another.

“Between the creeping plots and the changes we’re inflicting on this place, Katniss has her plate full already. I do what I can to help her complete her vision.” He knows he sounds defensive the moment he opens his mouth. “We find it hard to trust those who haven’t gone through the same ordeal.”

The ghola gifts him with a rare smile that’s all Peeta. “We? You sound like Sister Mason.”

“Reverend Mother,” Gale corrects, offended because he has no better comeback; they’re both parroting someone else’s mantra.

“They despise me, don’t they?” Peeta chews absently and with little appetite. He wastes no energy, so he can’t feel much hunger. “I heard them in the Great Hall, calling me abomination…” If he seems surprised, Gale assumes this to be a factor of his accelerated upbringing. Parts of him have yet to mature, even as his mind is a near-perfect replica of the seventeen year old boy who entered the Games and died for Katniss Everdeen.

Gale’s skin feels hot and uncomfortable beneath his tunic, as if the memory of that unrivalled sacrifice stokes fire in his veins. “Can you blame them? You’re proof that life doesn’t have to end and do-overs are possible.” Or, if not possible, then at least conceivable.

The ghola metes out his queries at a steady, uncomfortable pace, looking for all his bulk and cleverness exactly like the blonde boy the world once admired. The one Gale willfully left behind every time he went into the desert with the other raiders. “Is that what you think?”

This time, Gale leaves before he is forced to pervert his purpose with a lie.

***

Lunch is the same as dinner and dinner is the same as breakfast. Were it not for the cycle of the sun and the twin moons outside his window, Peeta figures he’d lose all sense of time. The clock on the bedside hasn’t been helping much.

Gale comes to see him twice a day. It’s never a regular schedule; sometimes he’s there when Peeta wakes from a fitful sleep; others, he arrives looking harried and sweaty, like he’s run a mile through arid dunes. Once, Peeta saw him kick his heels against the floor to shake off sand and dirt and he knew the other man had been out of the capital. But Gale hadn’t said where and Peeta had felt convinced the gesture was a carefully scripted way to remind him of his captivity.

He’s convinced of it when Gale arrives with a cup of ale and sits on the edge of his bed, shoulders hunched under a dark olive stillsuit. Peeta’s mouth presses into a tight line, though he can’t be sure he misses the liquor more than he does the tight fit of impermeable overalls that spell out trips into the dunes better than any folk tale. He knows them from childhood daydreams, if not practice.

“What’s the occasion?” It’s a long time before he speaks, and then he only does it to fill the silence. Gale hasn’t asked about his so-called mission since that first conversation. Now he just seems content to make their daily appointments and let Peeta say whatever he feels like saying.

The arrangement only serves to further persuade his captive of the council’s real expectations.

“Is there some feast you’re missing because of me?”

Gale shoots him a glare from beneath a long, dark fringe. His hair needs cutting. So does his throat. Peeta thinks the latter with far less heat than he should. “Search your memory. What date is it today?”

“I’ve been locked in here since I first set foot on Arrakis. I have no stomach for games.” This is a lie and Gale must know it even if he doesn’t quite grasp what life on Tleilax is like for a ghola. Training and studies are always conceived as high-stakes competitions, though the prize is never clear and the odds are stacked in favor of the dwarfish figures who engineer life out of thin air and real wombs. In a way, it’s no different than the Games before the fall of the republic. Peeta is used to being somebody’s pawn.

The cup of ale is held out to him. “Primrose Everdeen has finally crossed the threshold into adulthood.” Gale’s announcement carries the weight of a eulogy, for all that this is a happy moment. Or should be, were it not obvious that a grown-up Prim is a Prim ready to take up her sister’s mantle, as prophesized Empress of the known universe.

Peeta spends a brief moment wondering how the little girl-child whose name was picked to fight in the arena could grace a soothsayer’s dream as the likely candidate for messianic birthright, before the reminder follows that many years have passed. He’s missing precious pieces of this brave new world and his only teacher is his executioner.

Taking the offered cup takes effort, but it’s a better way to keep conversation going than to harass and demand information he feels entitled to hear. Peeta exhales slowly, letting his tension seep out. “So what happens now? Katniss steps down and allows her sister to be crowned?”

“Those are the rules. And Katniss has been a deft follower of protocol so far… not that you’d know it, since you were brought back from the dead.” If Gale smiles, it’s always obscured slightly by the jagged edge of insult. “She’s bought some time by asking for a proper feast at the sietch. Fremen ways take precedence over city traditions. The Bene Gesserit will grumble, but the rest of the empire will have no choice but to accept the delay.”

A feast, Peeta thinks, that he won’t be invited to attend because he’ll be locked in this room for the rest of his days. Bitterness holds a familiar taste.

“And then?”

“And then…” Gale tips forward, his elbows on his knees where he sits across from Peeta’s silken sheets and feather pillows like a living, breathing question mark. “We’ll see, won’t we? Are you going to drink that?”

Peeta stares into his borrowed cup, the murky liquid reminding him of days he hasn’t lived through and nights he hasn’t spent coveting his father’s vast array of bottles. “I don’t know. Could be poisoned.”

The first sip feels like the answer to a challenge. It’s received with the same crooked smile that Gale uses whenever he manages to confound his adversary.

***

Peeta is tossing in the throes of another nightmare when Gale slides through the hidden door, the satchel heavy on his shoulder and the stillsuit clutching him stiffly about the shoulders. He slips a hand under the collar, pulling it back slightly to ease his breathing while he works through the last of his farcical plan. The ghola doesn’t stir until the haversack hits the floor and then it’s only with the sluggish movements of one who is unused to alarm bells in the dead of night but whose nightmares often hold sway.

“Get up,” Gale hisses at him, far rougher than he intends to be. “We’re moving out.”

“Out?” Peeta doesn’t seem to understand him, but he’s sitting up and kicking off the part of the bed sheet that hasn’t yet met the ground. When awareness dawns at long last, his mouth morphs into something warped and foreign, like the slit from which should protrude a serpent’s tongue. “Out where? The gallows?”

Defiance won’t do more than delay Gale’s intent until he loses all nerve. This is a call beyond his authority to make, but he’s making it anyway because they’ve got no further since the ghola was locked inside this room. Katniss needs answers and Gale—

Gale provides. As always.

He grabs the bundle off the ground to throw onto Peeta’s bed. “Out into the desert. Can you still ride the sands like a Fremen?”

The pause is long, but Peeta pries open the sack, pulling out stillsuit and nose cone from its shallow depths. He scopes each in part as if they’re some sort of alien technology the likes of which he’s never handled before. Gale loses patience before his investigation is over. “Are you hoping to find some hidden code? Put them on.”

“I never learned.” Peeta’s eyes are far too clear in the twin shafts of moonlight streaming through his single window. “My parents didn’t allow it.” He seems almost emboldened as he says it. And why shouldn’t he be? The baker’s family had no need for perilous hunting on the sands, nor scavenging through foreign caves littered with danger.

Resentment curls Gale’s lips into a sneer. “Then enjoy your cell for the rest of the night.” He makes to leave, feeling a fool for trying to open the ghola’s horizons when his vision of what might count as excitement counts for naught.

“Wait.” For a genetically engineered carbon copy, the clone can move with unanticipated speed. One moment he’s on the bed and the next, Gale is faced with a pale hand on his much darker shoulder, clear gray eyes pinning him in place where he stands. “I wouldn’t object to learning, if you’d teach me.”

It’s the kind of answer Gale should have known to expect from a boy whose talented tongue far surpassed what he could match with his fighting arm, but it still catches him by surprise. The council won’t like this much; the Bene Gesserit haven’t stopped clamoring for a summary execution. Even the palace guards are uneasy to house a dubious creature in the cradle of the new empire. And here is Gale come to set him loose upon the sands.

Folly of the highest order, no doubt, but a preferable solution to the long hours spent trading witty repartee while the sun crawls higher or lower in the sky.

“Dress yourself,” Gale orders stiffly. He’ll teach him what he knows in the time available. He has no expectations of making a wormrider of the ghola, instead his mind is on the raised cliffs where they lived their youth.

Perhaps the sight of familiar places could jog the other man’s memory and settle the missing pieces. Gale doesn’t dare to hope for more.

He finds that Peeta is all bone-white flesh and blonde hair under his dark tunic, muscles ropey and light on a runner’s body. The Tleilaxu haven’t allowed him the luxury of lazy hours in untold comforts, but neither has he known the hardships of desert life. If he knows how to bind himself into the stillsuit, it’s through stolen memory alone. Gale catches himself staring a beat too long and, unused to the oversight, dodges a glance to the door.

If they take the proper exit, the guards will know of his plans and word could reach the rest of the council. Rumor travels fast in the palace. “I’ll have to blindfold you.”

Peeta follows his gaze to the wardrobe set inside the moving wall. He knows of the passageway, but he wouldn’t have been able to open it if he’s tried. His shrug holds the twisted not-quite-resignation proper to any man in his position. “Whatever makes you feel better, Gale.”

The knot of the scarf-turned-makeshift blindfold is a little tighter just for the taunt, and soon Gale is manhandling his charge through the concealed door and into dark, dusty corridors. They go down many steps, all of them narrow and cold to the touch, but if they slip, there’s rarely enough room to fall between cramped walls and low ceilings. If there are other hidden doors, Gale avoids them astutely, marching in silence save for the occasional muttered warning and the presence of a guiding hand on Peeta’s shoulder.

Six minutes in, the ground levels off again and there are no more steps. Gale lights up a flare to illuminate their path through the catacombs beneath the palace and helps Peeta through cavernous rooms few people know to find. Only trusted guards patrol this area of the palace and Gale is in charge of their rotation. He has selected an hour between rounds and opted for the exit furthest from the palace. This means a longer walk in pitch-black darkness, true, but at least once they hit crisp, night air, they can be sure there are no city dwellers to notice.

To his credit, the ghola is barely out of breath as they stop mere paces from the shield wall. “I can smell it,” he announces, almost childishly pleased. “Cinnamon-but-not. It’s the mélange, isn’t it?”

Gale reaches to tug the blindfold off without rewarding the observation with an answer. He leads them in a crisscross over dunes as white as ivory, his gait measured and arrhythmic lest it attract a sandworm. It’s a symbol of the old Arrakis and life in the sietch, but one he cannot break with no matter how many hours he spends training his pupils with guns and modern traps or revisiting security routines for their settlements off-world. He finds it hard to explain to city dwellers why he still carries a polished crysknife at his belt. Perhaps it’s because the past cannot be rewritten; he is a desert child and to the desert he must return.

The landscape is familiar and constantly changing. There are no fixed roads among the dunes and no hope of guidance from far-off landmarks. A storm is enough to make a rock into a mountain and a mountain into a sandy outcropping carved into the distance. Gale has always enjoyed the guessing game involved in finding his own way in the desert, but he is too old and too clever to think himself above Mother Nature’s trickery, especially on Arrakis, where gambling with one’s life is tantamount to suicide.

He leads them south of the city in a meandering path, alternating between the crest of fresh mounds and the perilous valleys among shallow ledges. Peeta is before him most of the way, but the ghola is inexperienced and he often looks over his shoulder for reassurance. Distraction makes him stumble, the ground vibrating with echoes that human ears cannot pick up. After three such accidents, Gale grabs his arm and insists they trade places. Sooner than die at Peeta’s hand, he fears death by sandworm.

“Much further?” Peeta is out of breath, his voice made slightly nasal by the nose cone filtering moisture from the air he expels. The complicated mechanism of the stillsuit will transform all lost liquid into filtered water that can be drunk to preserve life for a longer period than desert treks should allow. Still, nothing lasts forever and Gale knows they must make it to a sietch or back to the palace before their liquid supply runs out.

Spinning low on his ankle, he takes a swipe at Peeta’s right foot, easily sending the other man sprawling onto his back into the dirt. “What the—“ Rather than finish the sentence, the ghola kicks at Gale’s instep, tipping him off balance and onto the edge of a sandy bank. It’s not a graceful fall by any means, but then neither is Peeta’s hand on Gale’s chest, keeping him down as a fist rises through the air to—

“Listen!” Gale has a hand ready to parry the blow, but the other is fishing into the sands, grasping the edge of a riding hook. He has no intention of spilling blood upon the sands, but if he has to, if the ghola gives him no choice, he will defend himself as he can from an attack he should have seen coming all along.

Foolishness has rendered him blind enough to stagger off the edge of a cliff in the company of a demon. The reminder is glaring and painful and well deserved.

But Peeta hesitates. There is sand in his hair as he freezes mid-motion, brows gathered into an unhappy frown. “I can’t hear any—“

No sooner are the words out that the ground rumbles beneath them.

***

It’s like nothing he’s seen before. Peeta knows this isn’t true, that he can pluck many memories of sandworms and their riders from visions he witnessed as a child, but to remember and see it with his own eyes are two very different things.

Gale has removed them from the scene and onto higher ground, though he has kept them on the sands, their feet firmly planted and their bodies still as they watch the giant beast rise from beneath the earth. The scales on its back drip with scattered sand grains, some of which tickle Peeta’s nose and eyelashes, but it is the worm’s mouth that truly unsettles, with circular teeth that run the length of its beak and an overpowering odor of mélange as the thing moves, snakes through the sands and makes to depart.

This is where Gale springs into action. Peeta remembers riders in the sietch speak of the tiny tremor that passes through the ground as a worm retreats. The beast will be confounded by its own motion through the dunes and unable to hear sound in its immediate vicinity. This is the best time to act; a sort of now-or-never situation, which leaves Peeta with a mismatched set of fears and not a scarce amount of excitement. If he sets out to follow, it’s because he can’t conceive bearing the other man’s smug smile for tomorrow’s interrogation.

Sand dunes crumble and rebuild themselves with every step, his boots sinking and his feet far too slow to keep pace. The Tleilaxu Masters were right; the real thing does move faster. One moment Gale is a few paces ahead and the next he is running alongside the worm, hook in his hand and his shoulder nearly brushing the husk as he readies for its capture. Any sound of effort he might make is completely obscured by the glide of a heavy body through the sand, but Peeta knows he does not imagine the roar that fills his ears as the hook sinks in, prying open scales and forcing the worm to remain above ground when it would sooner sink beneath the sands.

Gale lifts himself onto the beast at a quick crawl, his stillsuit and hair so dark that for a long, loaded moment he is one with the animal, their bodies indistinguishable and their spirits in perfect sync. In the next, he’s steering the worm left, into Peeta’s path until the flicker of fear that broke surface earlier is back and Peeta is no longer sure Gale didn’t bring him out here for an execution.

He’s busy trying to remember if Fremen bury their enemies in the desert or run them through deathstills to extract water from the dead who no longer need it, when Gale puts an arm out and his hand, warm and calloused, closes around Peeta’s.

The worm’s husk is like tree bark, ridged and rough, but unlikely to leave splinters in his palm. Peeta rakes his knees against the scales, climbing quick and sloppy and hanging tight to the offered hand until he’s close enough to grab onto Gale’s stillsuit. His feet are spread wide on the back of the worm, foothold as steady as he can make it with the beast ebbing beneath him like a wave. It’s riding a ship on stormy seas, but there’s no water for miles. There’s nothing out here, save for the hot burn of scratches on Peeta’s hands and the tension in Gale’s body.

“All right?” Seen up close, the other man’s profile is all freckles and dust, a crooked smile tugging up the corner of his lips.

Peeta pinches his side, but the stillsuit is thick and unyielding and he can’t be sure intention makes much of an impact. “Just watch where you’re going.” Far from wishing to admit his failings in front of Gale, of all people, Peeta can’t deny a slight discomfort. Like all things new, riding sandworms feels a little frightening, a little exciting, but mostly surreal, like something he’s wanted to try yet never dared to.

He doesn’t ask where Gale is taking them. The rush of air and the sound of friction as they carve new paths through the sand is enough to stifle conversation, but it also helps to be overwhelmed with the novelty of the thing. By rights, he should planting a knife in Gale’s back and be done with his mission once and for all. If the other man didn’t expect it, Peeta might even do it. He doesn’t want to please by proving his enemies right.

Gale is saying something, his mouth moving in a rush of sound that Peeta can’t quite make out. He slides closer, working his arm around Gale’s waist to secure the hold. The other man’s hair is in his mouth as he speaks: “What?”

“Sietch!” A sharp nod of his chin directs Peeta’s eyes to a spot of black on the gray-yellow sky. There’s no mistaking the silhouette of a cliff, though from this distance it could be a mirage of the sands. Windbreakers wouldn’t show at this distance. Neither would the small birds which circle the few human settlements that have survived in the desert. But if Gale says they’re there, Peeta believes him. He believes even more when Gale turns his head again, his breath mingling with the cool breeze and Peeta’s hissed exhales, to add: “Home.”

Not just Gale’s home, at that, but Peeta’s, too. Once upon a time, at least.

He slithers back, putting distance between their bodies and fighting hard to remind himself where he comes from. What he is. The Tleilaxu will not have returned him to Arrakis out of charity.

***

It’s anybody’s guess if the desert ride has brightened the ghola’s mood. To see him on their return to the palace, Gale can’t help harbor resentment. After the risks he’s taken and the gamble he opted for in defense of all reason, here is Peeta walking sullenly beside him, his fists coiled and his eyes trained on the south wall of the palace keep. Soon they will have to stop so he can be blindfolded again. Gale wonders if that will engender another fight.

“Are you morose because I shoved you down?” If nothing else, the trip has taught him what he only suspected before; Peeta will throw a punch if he feels wronged. He won’t go easily to his death. That insufferable pride of his seems to have survived both death and resurrection.

The ghola doesn’t answer until Gale grabs his arm. “What’s gotten into you? Expecting an apology because I made you fall on your ass? Get over yourself; you don’t know the first thing about life in the desert, you don’t have a clue what it takes to ride a worm or trek through the sands or—“ A hand at his throat cuts short the tirade, Peeta suddenly too close, too angry, his eyes too grey under the fading moonlight. He looks about to snap, like a chord pulled to breaking point. Gale didn’t think he could wind him up so easily. It’s disconcerting. So is being caught off guard.

But Peeta doesn’t squeeze at his throat any tighter than he needs to shove him off. “Conceit,” he snarls, “doesn’t become you, Gale.” A moment later, the hand at his throat is gone and Peeta is stepping away, his shoulders tense and fists locked tight under the sleeves of his borrowed stillsuit. He was like this in the arena, too; arrogant, self-interested and manipulative. Gale didn’t understand what was going through his mind when he allied himself with the enemy and didn’t see his betrayal coming until it was too late and Katniss nearly lost her ear. He’s terrified of making the same mistake twice, now that so much more is at stake.

They resume their walk, shoulder to shoulder until it’s time for the blindfold. There are no words; Gale gives up trying to unlock the secrets hidden inside the ghola’s mind and he receives no thanks for his efforts. It’s fast become apparent that his intentions have hit the edge of a deep lake, his ankles submerged but the rest of him unwilling to take another step. Peeta was a shifty bastard before he died and he’s no better now. His treacherous depths beguile with a pretty smile and eyes the color of the sea, but Gale never learned to swim and he can’t judge if the surf is shallow or profound, rocky or smooth and forgiving.

He leads them into the palace through the same catacombs, murmuring advice that Peeta follows with exemplary obedience. They don’t trip, much, and too soon the door that parts under Gale’s handling is the hidden passage which leads into Peeta’s cell. It can be opened from both sides, or else it wouldn’t be of much use, but Gale knows better than to share that information with his prisoner.

“I’ll leave you, then.” He waits inside the room, his back to the wardrobe and his hands empty save for the improvised blindfold.

If his wandering gaze is anything to go by, Peeta isn’t interested in parting words. He seems restless, off his game, hands busy untying the straps that hold up his suit. The occasional grunt slides in between sharp tugs that are likely to damage the material more so than dislodge it, yet any attempt to offer help would, Gale knows, be met with violence. He makes to leave.

“Wait.”

“Yes?” There is a hopeful edge to Gale’s voice and it doesn’t belong there. He hates himself for the weakness, but it’s too late to hide it.

The ghola is stripped to the waist, his skin perfectly dry despite the effort expended in the hike. “What do I do with the suit?” It has the makings of a Fremen concern, though Peeta isn’t Fremen nor ever will be. Only a sietch dweller would care about recycling the water stored inside the fleshy fibers of the stillsuit. On the other hand, only a guilty mind would wish to conceal what it perceives as incriminating evidence.

Gale shrugs. “I’ll take it.” It’s not what he’d planned, but from a security standpoint, it makes better sense than leaving the suit with the ghola. Unlikely as it is that Peeta should make it out of the palace unsupervised, there’s no need to give him the tools for a successful desert crossing.

Heavier now than it was when he brought it in, the stillsuit is returned to the satchel and the satchel moved a foot nearer to where Gale has remained, unmoving, throughout the ritual. The ghola doesn’t seem to care that he is naked or peppered with fine sand grains on his cheeks and eyebrows. He disappears into the open bath a moment later, the sound of the spray a strange contrast to the squeezings saved by the stillsuit.

Gale reminds himself that gholas are not quite people and contradictory behavior is the first sign that something isn’t quite right with Tleilaxu materials. Yet as he leaves, his mind has space only for the mole on Peeta’s back, a palm’s width up from his tailbone, like a pressure-switch embedded into his spine.

He knows it well.

***

The buzzing of ornithopters wakes Peeta from a troubled sleep. He’s not ungrateful, but he has a hard time pretending to feel nothing as he watches the silver-tipped flocks descend on Arrakeen. Behind them are bigger ships, silhouetted against the morning sky like monuments of their era. They’re slow on approach and seem to linger in atmosphere a while longer than anticipated, as if they can’t decide where to pose their enormous talons.

Peeta must sit and watch for hours, entranced by the mismatched technology and House crests, but he can’t see the Tleilaxu emblem anywhere and its absence is telling. Other guilds are present; the Ixians have sent a chariot-like mothership with the coat of arms displayed proudly on each wheel. The Bene Gesserit Sisterhood has chosen to remain highly conspicuous, their delegation shrouded in a diamond of light and shadow, fine mesh shields glinting in the morning sun. They’ve come to complement their envoys on the ground and possibly clamor for Peeta’s execution some more, for all that the visit is set up under the auspices of an imperial celebration. He doesn’t begrudge them their perseverance, but where are his own people?

Not in existence, supplies a voice trapped within his mind, one of the many he hears believing they’re part of his own fractured sense of self. It’s not so unforeseen; Peeta is neither Fremen, nor Tleilaxu, neither friend to the Regent, nor enemy. He’s fallen through the cracks and there’s no one to catch him. The closest thing he has to an ally is powerless to keep him alive and the man he spent the night with wants to bury his sword deep in Peeta’s chest, whether in practice or by showing him the many things he’ll never enjoy. No home. No life beyond this tiny cell.

Furious and feverish, Peeta pushes away from the window with a vicious hand. The walls seem to be closing in, the floors are much too hot for walking, like charcoal strewn across the walkway to some forbidden treasure, and he can’t breathe, he’s clutching at the posters on the bed and the wardrobe nailed to the moving wall and he can’t—can’t breathe. He grits his teeth, sending the steel clock tumbling off the nightstand and the pillows from the bed. Next come the contents of the wardrobe—tunics in his size and trousers made to fit, shifts and boots and studded belts he has no use for and no concept of needing unless they return to him his crysknife, the one he never used but could have, if his father had died first, if his name hadn’t been called in the reaping and Katniss hadn’t been worth saving.

He tears up the room piece by methodical piece, progressing from armoire, to dresser, to the sheer canopy of the bed. It rips with a sickening sound, like flesh tearing open, but Peeta hears only the guards as they come to restrain him. They speak the language of the sietches, so they’re ready for the blows he lets fly. Two kicks connect enough to dislodge one guard, but the others grab Peeta and force him to the floor, thrusting shigawire bonds around his wrists. Pain is instant and hot, the restraints contracting the more he fights against their hold.

It’s well-deserved punishment for crimes he hasn’t yet committed but could. Just give him enough time. Just wait. Gale must know it’s true, otherwise he wouldn’t be dangling impossible promises before his eyes, pretending he’s treating him fairly when all he must want is to see him rot.

The guards thrust a hood over his head, but they’re uncertain if they should remove him to a cell or wait for executive orders. Their dithering is background noise for a man who has only realized that transgression, however small, could be his undoing. Prayers won’t help him now, yet the Litany Against Fear whispers at the edge of memory, beckoning sweetly with ill-remembered verses.

“I must not fear.” That’s how it begins, but what comes after that? Not being in a position to fear very often in his short life, Peeta finds his recollection slipping. “Fear is… fear is the mindkiller.”

Barely above a murmur, his nonsense goes unheard. Minutes or hours pass while he lies there on the floor, his head pressed into the wooden slabs and his arms bleeding from small puncture wounds where the barbed shigawire has dug its teeth. Peeta doesn’t know peace, not exactly, but mantras have a way of numbing the spirit. He’s alone here, abandoned and friendless. The closest thing he’s had to company for weeks has come in the form of his executioner. And the woman he thought he loved is — Peeta finds himself distracted from his inner diatribe by the hiss of the door as it slides open.

Were he immobilized anywhere else in the room, he’d miss Gale’s disappointment as he lets himself in past the threshold, in full ceremonial dress, the shiny crysknife sheathed at his hip. The guards make room, like the chorus line in a practiced dance. “A fine mess,” Gale compliments, sinking to his haunches like a desert cobra, perpetually prepared to strike. “Redecorating, were you?”

“What can I say,” Peeta bites out, “the curtains were bothering me.”

“So I see.” The quirk of his lip spells both pity and contempt, though neither lasts for long. “You may,” he adds, for benefit of the armed guards, “leave us. I’ve got this.”

A tenuous moment sees the minions exchange uneasy glances, but no one dares challenge Gale outright. They slink back beyond the door, their brows drawn and tension in their limbs; ready to pounce should Peeta make any sudden moves.

He wouldn’t if he could—which he can’t, not with the shigawire bonds around his forearms—because the rage has seeped out of him, leaving behind bitterness and resignation.

“This isn’t a good time for adolescent fits.” Gale rests one arm on his knee, in vicinity of his crysknife but nowhere close enough to grasp the hilt. Peeta has an answer ready for him, the likes of which would involve a stupid challenge and foolish bravado, when Gale does the unthinkable and squeezes his shoulder. Does so like a friend. “I’ll speak to Katniss.”

Is that a threat? Peeta glares from the floor. “You do that.” He wants to show he’s not afraid of him, of the Regent or the power she wields. He knows who he is, even if he can’t be sure he knows how he died. Most men, if given the choice, would prefer to forget.

But Gale isn’t most men. He’s imprudent and rash, freeing a prisoner who’s only just proven how erratic and dangerous he can be. Rubbing feeling back into Peeta’s wrists even as the broken skin leaks red blood onto his fingers.

A single hitched breath is enough to make him stop, the moment fracturing like fine, off-world marble and taking with it the warmth of Gale’s palms.

“You should clean those out before they become infected.” He’s businesslike as he sits back, coiling the now-useless shigawire into a tight, harmless loop. “I trust you’re capable of doing that on your own.”

Peeta tries to reward him with a sneer, but his treacherous, addled mind is lingering on all the wrong details and he can’t muster enough force for an adequate reaction. Staring at him blankly seems to suffice, as Gale rises to leave him be, unencumbered by the glaring destruction in what had until recently been a neat, snug sort of accommodation, fit for abomination itself.

“The Tleilaxu weren’t invited.” It’s not what he meant to say, but it’s out now and it’s true. Peeta can read it in Gale’s eyes. To his shock, the other man doesn’t seem pleased at their absence. “Why?”

“Politics.” He looks about to say more, to reveal to Peeta the intimate details surrounding that decision as he’s done before when his mouth gets the better of him.

It’s Peeta who stops him, choosing the comfort of his own ignorance over the tangled web of lies that stretches deep into the palace. The ground feels uneven under his feet, like the ridged back of a sandworm. Maybe that wasn’t such a terrible experience, after all. “How close are you to a decision?”

“A decision?”

“About me.” Peeta sits on the edge of the bed, the mattress askew, the sheets ripped clean through. “How much longer?”

A muscle works in Gale’s jaw, his eyes hard. His voice even harder: “That’s none of your concern. I will take as long as I need to be sure you—“

“But you already know how this is going to end? You’ve decided, for yourself?” It’s not much of a question, but the tone can’t be helped. Neither can the hopeful pitch fully vacate his tone of voice. “I know you, Gale; you’re not the sort to change your mind. Am I a threat? Am I worthy of your trust? Which is it?” Pick one, he all but begs and thinks: _I can’t take much more of this_.

Gale doesn’t answer. Then again, Peeta should’ve known to expect as much. If adolescent fits are on the docket, then storming out with cape billowing in one’s wake must surely be on par with tearing up one’s room.

***

The hall is littered with conversation and laughter like water trickling into crystal glasses. Gale sees everything from Caladan silk to embroidery from the machine-cities of Geidi Prime, where tiny, articulated arms fit gold thread into complicated tapestries that are then sold off as hand-craft. Having set down on the planet for the first of his missions off-world and seen the small children operating the gears with his own eyes, Gale knows that particular advertisement isn’t far from the truth.

Of course lies are in no short supply on the occasion of an imperial feast. Gale glimpses the sight of some heiress with wide-set eyes and a tall forehead, the issue of a minor house, as she offers Prim her wishes of good health and happiness. Two steps down, nobles are discussing the matrimonial matches available to the incumbent empress. They are hard to ignore as Gale arrives to the head of the long table, affable in all but the greeting he offers to the Regent.

“Your Grace,” Gale interjects, steel and poison on his tongue. “May I have a word?”

Prim doesn’t miss his tone from where she is seat, though she says nothing and gives no sign of failing to follow her supplicant’s compliments. It’s something to keep in mind; that this pretty, genial young girl will one day soon be mistress of the ‘verse and she is not as clueless as some would prefer her to be. Gale knows nothing of the way her mind functions, but for now, it is the Regent whose ear he must bend to the right path. In this endeavor, at least, he has some experience.

“How is he?” Clipped and short, Katniss barely moves her lips as she asks. They are still inside the hall, for all that they’ve moved outside of earshot of most guests. There are spies everywhere and every faction has in mind some way to manipulate the Regent and her resurrected would-be lover.

Gale wastes no time on paranoia. “Nursing a wicked case of cabin fever. We can’t keep him locked and shuttered like a dirty secret everyone already knows all about. It’s only proof we’re ashamed to have him in Arrakeen and afraid of what he could represent. If you grant clemency now, your allies will call it weakness and say you were swayed by your heart.”

“Would midnight wormrides be a better solution?”

Her back to the window, Katniss has the makings of a Christian saint in icons of old. If only her gaze were less tinged with judgment and haughtiness. If only she didn’t wear the burdens of the world on her shoulders and refuse to share them with the people who love her most.

If only, Gale thinks, she didn’t have a point. “You heard.”

“You forget my spies are everywhere.” This is the new Katniss; the girl he taught to lay snares but who preferred to strike her prey with a bow to give it an even chance has long been traded in for this sharp-witted, quick-tongued livewire of a woman with a prosthetic arm and the loyalty of billions. She turns to Gale, her arms folded over her bound chest like a mannequin in a shop window. It’s easy to see why so many still send suitors.

“Do I?” Gale flashes a smile better suited to the occasion than their conversation. “I thought I was one of them.”

“You’re my friend. A far better position, according to some.” She doesn’t say it, but Gale knows what she means. They’ve lost many supporters over the years, but the losses that hurt most are those closest to the heart. Finnick, Haymitch, Cinna, Beetee and Wiress are the names of saints and heroes now celebrated through song and poetry, but they were once friends and lovers. They were family.

Somewhere on that list, Gale thinks, is Peeta’s name.

“What of the ghola?”

“What of him?” Katniss can be hard when she wishes it, but it’s still unsettling to see her turn herself to steel where loved ones are concerned. And she did love Peeta; Gale has seen the footage, has known her in the ten years since Peeta’s death. She’s loved him like all victims love their saviors, yet now that she has him back, she seems in no hurry to rush back into his arms. Their reunion confounds Gale and baffles the world. “I delegated the decision to you. Is he trustworthy?”

By rights, Gale should say no. Violence doesn’t recommend a man. Neither does the imperfect knowledge Peeta seems to hold of his own past. “I think. I believe he means you no harm.”

Katniss lets out a long breath. “Good. And Prim?”

“Prim? I don’t—“ It hadn’t occurred him to worry about the younger sister, the one whose fate was prophesized by soothsayers long before the war. Whose name was drawn in the same reaping that Katniss annulled by volunteering to take her place. Whose life was not spent in the fighting and whose hands have known no death, though hundreds of thousands still die in her name.

Prim, who believes the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood have things to teach her and who loves her sister beyond all else.

“I don’t know.” Gale is sincere, but sincere idiocy is still idiocy. Of course, he should have considered that Katniss would not put Peeta through such a trial were it for her own safety. She thinks herself invincible, yet Prim is all she has left in this world.

The girl he once taught to ride worms and capture small animals arranges her lips into an indulgent smile, as if she is the elder. “Fulfill your mandate. Find out.”

***

“This could be much worse,” Gale tells him. “You understand that. You could be tortured, beaten… deprived of food and water and sleep. This is nothing.” And for all that Peeta knows and agrees, he can’t help the shudder that passes through him at the curl of fingers into his flesh, the sharp drag of teeth against his throat, warmth engulfing him and his breaths harsh, needy, lungs burning for the lack of oxygen. If he could just—move, then the pressure in his spine would begin to ease and—

Gale give a sharp, high pitched little whimper and Peeta’s eyes snap open to a ceiling that’s unfamiliar to him and surroundings that he can’t place. It comes back to him slowly; the torn down curtains, the scattered, broken furniture. Gale’s decision to have him moved to different quarters in the south wing. It shouldn’t be his call to make, but then Katniss hasn’t been in to see him since that first day and Peeta is fast giving up hope that she will anytime soon. Perhaps there’s strategy in her absence. Perhaps she just doesn’t care.

He showers quickly and efficiently, scrubbing his face in the sink until any memory of ghostly fingers on his wrists has faded to the reality of puncture scars on pale forearms. The shigawire left a mark on his flesh just as solitude is twisting his mind. That’s all there is to it.

Dressing himself takes time, but only because Peeta insists on dragging out the minutes. There won’t be anything for him to do but pace the length of the room like he did yesterday. If he’ll come up to a step or two less than usual, he’ll know to start again, this time adjusting his strides until they match perfectly. Then he’ll stop and look out the window—this one smaller than the last and without curtains—to see the sands stretch out beyond the shield wall. He’ll look for wormsign, but won’t find any.

Maybe he will try to stay awake to catch sight of the pretty servant girl who brings his food and collects his laundry. Maybe he will fail. Sooner or later, sleep will claim him again and his dreams will betray him with unconscionable visions. He will wake again and catalog the memories as meaningless debris.

He will go mad.

Peeta rights himself slowly, considering the sharp edges of the mirror and the rough corner of the sink. He has belts, too, in the armoire in the other room. It wouldn’t take much to provoke the guards, if he doesn’t dare go through it alone. But a deeper query begs to be considered; what if he is brought back? There is nothing he can do to fully obliterate his body. The Tleilaxu are crafty enough to use the tiniest speck of blood for their experiments and Peeta doesn’t want another shot at this.

After eleven hours of waking torment, he watches the ‘thopters swarm over the palace keep and disappear into the blackness of the night. He knows, though no one has come to tell him, that Katniss is aboard, gone to celebrate in her sister’s name in the one place Peeta will never be welcome.

“See anything interesting out there?” Gale’s voice comes through loud and clear, but he’s no figment of Peeta’s guilty imagination. He stands in the doorway looking tired but not unhappy, his belt devoid of the usual ceremonial weapons. A pack of hexagonal game cards is in his hand and he waves it sloppily when Peeta’s gaze drifts to the new object. “I thought we could play.”

It’s not the most surreptitious attempt Gale has made of forcing him to talk. Peeta keeps this in mind as he steers himself away from the window to the only seating offered by the sparsely furnished room. “The bed will have to do.”

They share the cards between them, ten each and the deck laid out with only the topmost card revealing a painted figure. Gale examines the hand he’s dealt himself and passes the turn. He doesn’t speak much through the operation, just like he didn’t speak much while on the back of a worm, his body a thin, taut line against amber sands. Peeta’s hand is better. He could meld three cards even without picking up the solitary offering and take the lead in what is likely to be a short game. It was like this with his brothers, before the reaping, before they refused to do for him what Katniss did for her sister. He misses their games.

“Do you know where my folks are?” Peeta turns down the top card, flicking another one from the deck. “They haven’t been to see me or… They must know I’m here.” The whole world knows; what happens in Arrakeen happens to the empire, be it revolution or domestic drama.

Gale’s smile is full of regret (but not, Peeta is surprised to note, pity). “They’re still at the sietch. I think. I haven’t heard any petitions.” And Peeta thinks: of course you haven’t, they know their interest and I’m too much of a live wire to take into one’s arms.

He melds three cards just to show he can and shifts against the bed, wishing for the crawling in his bones to stop. Three months of this and he’s already proving his Masters right; he’s weak.

“If it were me, I’d wait until the Regent made a decision. No point risking my family before I know my son or brother will get a definite pardon. And if he doesn’t, I have time to prepare his escape.” Gale doesn’t meet his eyes. “That’s what I would do.”

It’s sacrilege and comfort in a single, unnecessary answer. Peeta can’t decide what he’s to make of it; Gale has never given an inkling of friendship towards him. He’s not supposed to care about his survival, but rather to define the best way to murder him. “That’s the difference between you and most people in the sietch,” Peeta murmurs thinly.

Genuine interest seems to prompt a question. “What?”

“You think Katniss is just a person… She’s not, is she? If she wants me dead…”

“Katniss doesn’t know what she wants.” This, from her most loyal defender, strikes Peeta as the worst sort of betrayal. He bristles on her behalf, but there’s no time to jump to her defense. Gale has that angle covered front and center: “She’s taken the court to the sietch to celebrate her sister’s coronation. She doesn’t want Prim on the throne any more than she wants to take a stand against her. But she’s the only one who can make that call. The rest of us, we’re just pawns, aren’t we?” Gale’s blue-in-blue stare pierces like a silver-tipped arrow. “You should know that better than most.”

“Because I’m ghola?”

Gale has the temerity to shake his head, his expression shuttered. “No. Because you were a boy made to fight to the death for the amusement of perverted elites.”

Memories are conjured up too easily. Peeta knows this, having spent the better part of a year trying to parse truth from lie and first impression from second-hand information. He’s no better prepared to tell one from the other, but he has questions and he feels brave enough to ask them.

The cards in his hand fold into a neat stack, the sharp points digging into his fingers. “How did she lose her arm?” It’s obvious he wasn’t there to witness it; or, if he was, his memories are blocked by some mechanism of Tleilaxu origin. One failing is no better than the other.

“There was a fire. The Gamemakers lost interest in the slow turnover, so they thought they’d rush things along. Katniss survived, but the flesh on her arm couldn’t be rebuilt. There was nerve damage, infection…” Gale averts his eyes. “When it was over, she asked for a working prosthetic. It hasn’t changed her much, she’s still good with a bow, when she has time to shoot.” Not often, Peeta infers, and Gale misses their time together.

“I died before that, didn’t I?” He hears his own voice as if it’s coming from faraway, an echo of a question perched on the edge of his lips, tumbling into uncertainty.

Gale struggles with himself. This must be one of the things the council deems Peeta should recall, if he’s to be regarded as a full person. But the council hasn’t seen him in months and Gale is alone here, with only his conscience as guide. Peeta watches his fingers as he manipulates the cards—three melded Bishops and a Rook facecard turned up on the deck—with a killer’s precision. This is the man who’s had ten years with Katniss, with the new world order and his own freedom. This is the boy who rode worms while Peeta stared longingly from the cliffs and yearned to be out on the sands, in control of his own destiny.

“Tell me.” He means it as an order, but the plaintive edge mangles the words. The cards in his hands have twisted to rumpled carton.

“You broke your neck. I assume.” Gale rests his chin in his hand, looking inexplicably tired—for this, Peeta feels some small amount of compassion, but not enough to keep playing the other man’s games. “The explosion you remember blew out Katniss’ ear and propelled you back into a tree. Shrapnel put a whole in your spine. After that…”

“They flooded the arena with fire.” Peeta remembers heat licking at his fingertips, the scorching pressure of a fireball inside his mouth. Pain so excruciating it rendered him unconscious.

He doesn’t realize he’s shaking until Gale has a hand on his nape, his voice low but urgent, telling him to breath. To relax.

It’s over now. _Fear is the mindkiller._

After, Peeta isn’t sure how it happens. He remembers Gale’s hand—fingers chilled and strong as they slide into his hair—and his mouth, but not the hitch of his own breath, the tentative drag of teeth against the fullness of Gale’s lips. The warmth coiling in the pit of his stomach. He expects Gale to kiss with violent intent and bruising force, only to find him careful and reserved, as if he has as much experience with this as Peeta does with wormriding. The comparisons are there, if he looks for them; but there’s no space for thinking.

Gale keeps close in the aftermath, shuddering with tension and unspoken things. His fingers card through Peeta’s hair at a feeble pace. Up, down. Up, down. “We shouldn’t have done that,” he sighs, the warmth in his voice spilling over Peeta’s ear in a tremulous sigh. Strange, it isn’t like Gale to make mistakes. That’s Peeta’s territory.

He doesn’t offer him absolution, but the second kiss is made easier by the softness of the bed and Gale’s hands on the small of his back.

***

There’s nothing here that Gale hasn’t done before in the granary behind the Hob where he and Katniss sold game and desert trinkets, or on the thin mattress of Arrakeen’s famed whorehouses. He’s tumbled girls and boys and sometimes fell in love with them, too, enough to write letters and keep them fed until they found someone better. And they always do.

Peeta is no exception. He kisses softly, like Gale is a fragile piece of imported china that must not be damaged at any cost. It rankles, to be thought of as weak, but every time Gale makes to deepen the kiss, Peeta nudges at his hip with a gentle hand and thought disperses. Peeta has excellent hands; what else is there for a baker’s son to inherit, save for talented fingers and an eye for beauty? A soft body, perhaps, which Gale expects but doesn’t find under the other man’s clothing. Hard to tell if the Tleilaxu changed that about him; the last time Gale saw him, he was caked with mud and blood and Katniss’ warm tears, most of his skin singed by fire and grotesque wounds suppurating under charred clothes.

Gale pulls his mouth away on the cusp of a moan, eyes squeezing shut against the recollection and the feel of Peeta’s hands as they drag across his flesh. “I remember this,” he hears him whisper. “But that’s not right, is it? We’ve never—“

He looks hopeful and confused, his eyes searching Gale’s for the truth and Gale isn’t strong enough, brave enough or kind enough to give him what he needs. “No,” he lies. “We never.” Which isn’t to say they won’t.

Game cards bend and crunch under Gale’s back, melded pairs losing their third and most vital piece, their corners twisting, ripping to shreds as the bed dips and Peeta fits his mouth just there, just right. Gale shudders helplessly, because _it’s been so long_ , stroking his fingers through straw-colored hair in an attempt to regain the upper hand. That ship has sailed long ago. It’s flown off into the ether, leaving him adrift in silky sheets, under a warm, heavy body that is all male. All human.

Tight hands grab his, fingers like manacles around his wrists as he’s pressed down, spread open by strong legs that have managed to outrun the inevitable. It’s disorienting to be on the receiving end, yet Gale has no breath to muster an objection. Peeta is there, in his mouth and in his head, rolling his hips with every creak of the bed and oh God, it’s them, they’re making that sound—moans and gasps intertwined in a furious race to erase the syllables that almost but never quite form _her_ name.

It’s Gale who started this, but Peeta who finishes it, tearing his mouth away as he ruts shamelessly against Gale’s hip. Two strokes, three and his breath stutters out of him, hold growing lax around Gale’s hands. He sags against him with a long sigh, his heartbeat so loud that Gale can feel it thumping brazenly against his chest. As accidents go, this is the worst.

“Kiss me.”

Peeta’s voice has gone so soft that at first Gale suspects a misunderstanding. He cranes his neck to see him, finds long lashes on a pale cheek and—hesitates. Warm breath tickles Gale’s shoulder, the tender skin between his ear and his jaw. Just like before.

They were kids, the last time, hapless boys who didn’t understand that what they were doing was if not wrong then at least unseemly. Peeta had run off, afterwards, his ears red and his clothes rumpled. Gale hadn’t realized his own were in disarray until his mother glanced at him in that exasperated way mothers know so well, annoyed with him for getting in another fight. I’m sorry, he’d told her. I’m so sorry.

But he isn’t. Not really.

He tilts his hips up, one arm around Peeta’s back to hold him in place, and listens, captivated, to the hitched breath that escapes the other man’s throat. Peeta curls into him, hands useless on either side of his head but capable—so very capable—to snap his neck. Were he afraid enough, Gale thinks he might stop. He’s not so hard up and Peeta is far too volatile to trust. To depend on. To allow into his heart or mind or, likeliest of all three, his body.

“You didn’t…” Peeta seems surprised, bearing down on Gale’s hips until he can’t but feel the curve of his hardened cock. He looks dazed, his hair a mess and his lips swollen, begging to be kissed.

Gale forgets to fear him. “Give me your hand,” he asks and Peeta does, willingly, mouthing at his collarbones until it’s Gale who’s struggling to muffle moans against a full, warm mouth.

Afterwards, Peeta drags wet fingers over his lips and cheek and chases them with tender kisses. It takes Gale a moment to grasp the finer nuance of the gesture, to understand that Peeta is tasting his come without an ounce of shame.

It takes another long beat for Gale to realize that he’s in far deeper than he thought.

***

It would be easier if Gale had left a mark. As it is, Peeta can’t claim he was treated badly or coerced into something sinful and vile against his will. Can’t claim it was sinful or vile to begin with. He searches for scars for long hours once he’s alone, peering at his reflection in the mirror and trying hard to avoid the eyes. They’re blue-in-blue and glowing; he’s spent long enough on Arrakis that the spice addiction has taken hold, infecting him through air and food and even filtered water. Should he ever leave, there will be withdrawal symptoms, cravings. Yet of all that’s happened in the past weeks, this bothers him least.

It would be better if he had residual bruises to show for the things he cannot say.

Peeta makes a neat pile of the game cards, aligning their six edges on the dresser and making the bed once he’s finished. The sheets need changing, but the wet spot is drying already. He can sleep on the other half, the unused half, and pretend he doesn’t remember the taste of Gale’s moans or how he crumbled when Peeta put his hand around him. So much heat from a boy who has always been cold, ice to Katniss’ blazing fire—and the thought burns him with shame because Katniss is the reason he is here. She’s supposed to be the one in his bed, not her loyal lackey.

Despite fitful thoughts, Peeta sleeps soundly for the first night in many. There are no dreams and he only wakes once, hours before dawn, to find Gale seated on the edge of the bed, his calloused fingers carding hair from Peeta’s eyes. It’s surprisingly gentle, like petting a horse or a dog or a small child. He blinks up at him through sleep-weighed lashes. “What—“

“I’m leaving for the sietch,” Gale whispers in a low voice, shushing him. Peeta thinks there might be a smile, too, but the shadows don’t let him see it.

He feels that calloused palm curve around his cheek and his mouth does the only thing it seems to know these days; the kiss is sloppy, wet, sleep-tainted and enough to make Gale swallow audibly. When he pulls away, Peeta tells himself he does so reluctantly.

“Okay,” croaks Peeta, because what else is there to say? Take me with you? Gale can’t do that and they both know it. He can’t ask him to stay, either, as duty and love for the Regent come first. Dark needs in a dark room count for nothing when light threatens to break over the horizon.

The other man is in the doorway, almost gone, by the time Peeta finds his brain.

“You’ll be careful.” _Or else._

The desert is treacherous and the Regent’s company is made up of scheming devotees and would-be murderers. Whatever else is to be said about his role in this sad little drama, Peeta knows, with absolute certainty, that he doesn’t want Gale to fall to another’s knife. Tells himself he wants that honor to be his.

When he wakes, alone and well-rested amid soft sheets, Peeta’s first thought is for his floundering memory. There are pieces missing and blanks where there should be milestones, but he’s had weeks in a familiar place to remind him of the reality and nothing has become any clearer. That it hasn’t helped seems to suggest some deeper problem; a blockage of some sort, like a stopper preventing him from recalling what he knows he should.

Meditation had helped the tributes before they were sent into the arena, though they never mastered the skill like the Bene Gesserit seem to do. Johanna Mason had been a young acolyte at the time, with little experience and even less patience. Her words have fled memory, just like the force of her cane had failed to leave marks on Peeta’s shins. What he remembers involves a steady, fixed glare, a straight back and gradual awareness of his muscles. There should be words, too, some sort of mantra that is whispered to distract the mind and release the spirit from real-world constraints, but he can’t dredge it up from memory.

“Your posture is weak,” hisses Johanna’s voice, as imaginary as her slap. With his eyes closed, Peeta can see her black robes, the coil of her hair where one braid had fallen from the crown of her head. He likes the auburn and gold threads in her mane, would put his fingers through the strands, if she let him, but her cane is back and his shoulder stings with phantom pain. “Pay attention to your breathing.”

He tightens the muscle; it’s not poor advice.

In and out, rhythmic, slow, in tune with every steady rise and fall, until his body is swaying lightly and his thoughts are caught up, dangling on silver chains like wind chimes in the chambers below the sietch. Peeta’s eyes squint against their many colors, the sharp whites and the stark grays making him think of storm clouds and noon skies, the shiver of the gusts like an ill-remembered hum sneaking under the covers and whistling in cavernous depths.

He’s not supposed to be here; twelve years old and smarting from his mother’s blows, he’s far too old to hide and far too young to be allowed amid the fragile green. Yet here he stands, unmoving, peering from behind a tall, clear cylinder where layer upon layer of soil feeds life into thriving weeds and medicinal flowers. If he were older, he might understand the importance of what his stubby fingers are digging into, but he’s not and he only knows this is forbidden and beautiful and he—

He’ll get in trouble.

There are footsteps on narrow stairs carved straight into the rock and they are bound to find him. Once they do, his mother will break out the wooden spoon she uses to mix batter and—Peeta drops to his knees in an effort to conceal his presence. He miscalculates and winds up on his behind, shoulder smacking dully against the rock wall. A pained groan escapes him before he can clamp a hand over his mouth.

If he were older, he’d know that echoes carry easily inside the sietch.

He can make out two voices, one younger and one older, in the arched entryway. It’s only a matter of time, now, before they discover him here and he’s made to suffer the indignity of a triple punishment. Peeta sends a prayer to gods he hasn’t yet learned to believe in, burrowing deeper into the smooth surface of stone planters. The shuffling footsteps grow louder and so does the blood pounding against his ears. Two seconds now. One.

Sun-browned legs appear around the edge of the urn. They’re attached to a boy not much older than he is, wearing the dark colors of a man’s garb. Blue-in-blue eyes meet Peeta’s, a brief moment of recognition transpiring between them.

“Father,” the boy calls over his shoulder. “I just remembered Everdeen was looking for you. He said it was important.”

A long sigh echoes from beyond Peeta’s field of vision. “You couldn’t have said so sooner? He’s leading the trek tonight. What if they’ve need of my hooks or your mother’s mending? Careless boy.”

The son has no apologies to offer, but he looks appropriately cowed. They leave together, single file, up the narrow steps they’ve only just descended.

Peeta isn’t brave enough to look around the planter to offer his thanks and the memory fades, becomes indistinct and blurred by time’s unremitting chisel. He’s reasonably sure of walking out of the cave, scurrying with heart in his throat to rejoin the tribe and make himself useful, but he can’t be certain that he didn’t get a beating anyway.

His room in the palace comes into focus; first the bed, with its tangled sheets and the misaligned pillows, then the side table, the dresser. The window from which Peeta tells himself he can see his home. From where he sits on the floor, he has a clear view of a terracotta sky and not much else. For once, he doesn’t feel trapped so much as perplexed.

Why should that memory be buried? What has a boy’s kind gesture to do with politics and games of thrones and champions and regents?

What does it matter that the boy was Gale?

***

Prim carries herself with newfound grace. She’s always been a gentle, giving soul, but she’s purposeful in her attempts now, speaking to everyone at the table and addressing her peers with a high-minded lilt. To her credit, she treats the Sisterhood with the same warmth as she does the naibs of the sietch and the guards flanking her seat at the banquet table. She doesn’t play favorites. Gale almost wishes she were less adept in this new role.

He nurses a cup of ale and a headache from the ‘thopter ride, but neither are to be avoided. It’s expected to drink the heiress’ health in poisonous liqueurs and only barbarians ride precious animals when perfectly good hovercrafts are available. These shining examples of new world incongruity are just the pinnacle of conversation when the full court is gathered on Arrakis. If Gale expected the worse to be over after a month-long celebration in the capital, then he was sorely mistaken.

“At least there are no jugglers,” Johanna Mason pipes in from the sidelines, watching him with hawkish interest. “We were surprised to see you delayed. We feared you would not come.”

There is no cup in the Reverend Mother’s hands, so Gale takes a purposeful long sip from his own. It’s a desert brew, as coarse as the furnishings and the ceremonial robes donned by the men and women in attendance, but it will do. “I don’t doubt you were preoccupied with what you might have left behind,” he puts in, too distracted to savor the banter and too weary to see it continue. “If you’ll excuse me—“

“ _We will not_.”

He hates it when they do that. After the war, the ability to withstand Bene Gesserit compulsion was outlawed and the Sisterhood’s methods brought under the imperial seal. Now anyone who abuses compulsion or teaches defense against its thrall can be persecuted by the Regent herself. It’s a fine line to walk and Johanna Mason must know as much. Gale sees her dart an uncomfortable look around her as she glides closer in her silken black robes.

“Careful, Reverend Mother. We wouldn’t want anyone to think that you’re attempting to seduce me.” If there is steel in his voice, it’s only there as long as the compulsion allows it. There have been rumors of Bene Gesserit experiments in the old days, but there is too much at stake, now, for the Sisterhood to play with fire. They depend on the spice-mélange as much as any other faction in the known universe.

Johanna doesn’t see the joke. “I’d sooner swallow nails than take you to my bed.” It’s a rare thing, to hear her speak in her own name, as if she’s an individual rather than part of a collective mind-hive. Gale’s smile grows at the thought, even if the illusion doesn’t persist: “We thought you would have a verdict by now. What of the ghola? Has he been corrupted?”

Her insistence is coupled with a piercing glare and the sudden, uncomfortable sense that she’s rummaging about in his brain. (It’s impossible, she’s no mind reader, but the scrutiny is largely unpleasant anyway.)

Gale steps forward, crowding Johanna’s smaller frame against the ridged surface of the wall. “You will have your answer when the Regent demands it of me.”

If a warm mouth against his is the extent of Tleilaxu genetic manipulations, then Gale already knows Peeta’s taint. But if there’s more, if he really is the ticking time bomb Katniss fears, then no sentiment can cloud his judgment. No personal input. He is to be impartial where Katniss is not.

“And when is that?” The Reverend Mother has dropped her biggest ace, but she is still defiant in the face of his nameless threat, like only a victor of the arena could ever be. “When will she decide whether to toss you out for a half-living thing who thinks he is a man?”

She means it as a threat, no doubt, though it falls on deaf ears. Gale watches the sneer that tugs at her lips and folds her brow. She might have been beautiful once, before she became cold and angry in devotion to a cause that sucks a little bit more out of her each year. Soon she will be bled dry, a mannequin to be used and abused as the Sisterhood deems it necessary. Worst of all, she will feel her life has meaning because of it.

Gale steps away, his cup balanced perilously between two fingers. “Enjoy the feast, Madam.” Her taunts have left him ruffled, yes, but not for the reasons she suspects.

He sits with the old men for a while, listening to their heavy breathing and puffing from the smokepipe when it is offered, with gratitude. The crowds are thin, for many young men have moved to the cities where they can make easy money and meet easy women, but their forefathers linger, well-worn faces locked in amber as they speak of the old days. To listen to them is to hear the ticking of the clock, each precious second another step closer to the fulcrum from which all things begin and end.

Cinnamon finds its way into Gale’s mouth and eyes, a red-brown dust sweeping over the stone as dancers form and the stately feast becomes a reveler’s fantasy. Among them is Reverend Mother Johanna, sashaying on the arm of a spare prince from a minor House. Gale doesn’t know his name and doesn’t care to find it out; it takes time for things to change, out among the dunes, but for Prim’s sake, the elders have allowed off-worlders into the sietch. They’ve bent the laws twice over. She’ll have to reward them once she is Empress.

Once Katniss is Regent no more.

He spies his childhood friend in the crowd, chatting amiably with a general from her predecessor’s army. Gale knows the man well enough to guess they’re not wasting time on pleasantries or insipid conversation; if not for his valiant decision to break with the old regime, the war would have lasted another month or two, to the detriment of men and women on both sides and far greater economic paralysis than could have allowed recovery. Katniss trusts the man for his deeds, not his past allegiance. It’s a wisdom Gale wishes he could see reflected in what they’re doing to Peeta.

Pale fingers flash through memory, curling tight and confident around his own, belying the helpless sounds that poured from a gasping mouth.

If Peeta is a drowning man, then Gale has a choice: he can be his savior or his executioner. He stands on unsteady feet, quick to put the celebration behind him and quicker still to fashion a plan. He has prevaricated long enough.

His back is already turned to the revelers when Katniss glances his way. She doesn’t appear surprised to see him leave ahead of schedule.

***

The bed isn’t so wide or sturdy that the pressure of moving body won’t rouse its only occupant. Sure enough, Peeta’s eyes snap open as soon as he feels the mattress dip, his body tensing to defend against—what? The guards have left him alone since he was moved and the servants who fix up his room never try to approach or address him. He’s just another piece of furniture around which they must move, quickly and efficiently, as they race down their daily to-do list. No one has so much as glanced his way since that emotionally-charged afternoon in the throne room. No one, that is, save for Gale Hawthorne.

Peeta recognizes him by scent alone. It’s primal and intimate in a way he has no business knowing anything about his jailers, but that label no longer applies to Gale. He’s defied expectations twice over and the trip to the desert is only the lesser of his inexplicable tactics. If this is what he’s moved to, Peeta can’t help a frisson of discomfort; it’s one thing to fall into something because he chooses it, quite another to be assumed willing without the benefit of so much as a query.

He lies in wait for Gale’s hands under his shirt, prying the covers away from his midriff, wondering if he’d stand a chance against the Captain of the Regent’s Guard. Gale has ten years of fighting and battle that Peeta can’t hope to match, but he’s been trained in hand-to-hand combat and he’s not about to let his honor be trampled upon by a man who thinks he has a right to him just because Peeta made a mistake.

He’ll fight him, if he has to. He’ll rip into him with fists and teeth and see what’s left when he’s finished. Then he’ll worry about explaining himself to Katniss.

But the cold fingertips he expects don’t follow. Instead, within moments, Gale’s breaths have evened out, his shoulders sagging where he lies – asleep. Peeta peeks at him through half-lidded eyes, disbelieving what his vision reports; not a hand lifted against him, then, just a stumbling attempt at restful sleep.

Suspicious to the last, Peeta waits to see the trap close around him, to be pinned down, perhaps, when he least expects it. Gale is rumored to be skilled enough at games of strategy and so strong in combat that he might try it. Yet Gale is also out like a light beneath Peeta’s covers, his bangs hanging heavily in his eyes and his mouth twisted into a half-pout. He sleeps on his stomach, limbs sprawling every which way to take up space he cedes to Katniss and Prim and everyone else during his waking hours. When Peeta reaches up a hand to brush his bangs from his forehead, the other man doesn’t even stir.

“I could have killed you,” Peeta announces in the morning. His wet hair clings to the scalp, drying in the warmth of the room and he spies Gale’s gaze on him as he follows the flow of water over his chest. It’s enough to make a different sort of heat than that of fury bloom within his chest. “You shouldn’t sneak up on people like that. Especially when they’ve been made-to-order.”

Gale flashes him a smile. “And yet you didn’t.” He seems inordinately pleased at this development, as if Peeta were a pupil who’s just performed admirably in a student examination by not murdering his instructor. If he weren’t already up and about, tugging on his sand-caked boots between twin yawns, Peeta might press him back into the bed and kiss that smirk right off his face.

In his mind’s eye, everything is easier.

“Yes, well. I didn’t relish the thought of sleeping in a pool of blood.” It’s unusual for Gale to be tongue-tied – his memories show him to be a smooth talker before the cameras and a diligent negotiator between bullies and their victims – but he blames the peculiarity of the moment for his hesitation. Gale has come back far too early for the subtle whisper of his hands to evade Peeta’s thoughts. The rest of the court is still in the desert, making merry on the eve of a historic occasion; by rights, Gale should be with them, where he is needed.

A muscle works in Peeta’s jaw as he tries to make sense of this new development. “I take it dinner didn’t agree with you.”

Anything less than the quiet show of mirth behind silver eyes and Peeta would be lunging himself into a verbal diatribe about stubborn hounds who don’t know when to quit the chase. Gale deserves it, he thinks, for the games he’s been playing since Peeta was delivered into his care. (That it’s neither Gale’s doing nor his choice that have placed Peeta behind locked doors is knowledge his selective memory elects to ignore.) Misfortune blossoms as Gale stands from the bed, quick to forestall the soliloquy he can’t know is coming.

“Dinner was noisy and the people were two-faced. What else is new?” He adjusts his belt with practiced hands, examining his rumpled uniform in a mounted mirror. No doubt so many nights have been spent in military dress that the creases are part of the livery. “They’ll be coming back this afternoon. Prim will have her crowning at dusk, the proper way.” The Fremen way, he means but doesn’t say. Doesn’t have to.

Peeta can’t recall when his feet resumed their motion, but he stands by the other man’s shoulder, resolutely denying the sight of his own reflection in the mirror. He looks far too slight and young and blonde for a Fremen youth. His voice pitches high on a question – “So soon?”—though it’s not the one Peeta has been meaning to ask since the _incident_.

There’s little hope that Gale will volunteer the information he needs; he hasn’t yet.

His hunter’s hands adjust his belt, his sabre and scrub at the shadow of a beard on chin and neck. He seems perplexed to find it there, if not a little upset, as if it’s a mark of slovenliness or lack of hygiene. It’s strange to imagine Gale possessed by such pedestrian ideas, though not impossible. Peeta all too often forgets that he’s just a boy – twenty-eight years old and still in the service of his childhood sweetheart, but still _just_ a boy.

“Leave it,” Peeta insists, shifting to thread their fingers together, “you’ll only rub it raw. Bring a razor and I’ll give you a shave.” Gale’s hand is calloused and warm in his, the curl of his lips almost comical as he scrambles for a retort that won’t hurt a ghola’s feelings without placing Gale at its mercy. He’s honorable enough to try, so Peeta spares him the effort. “You were telling me about the coronation.”

“Yes. Tonight.”

In the mirror, Gale’s gaze seems tethered to their joined hands. Is he dismayed that he missed out on the last opportunity to bed the death row prisoner? Peeta can’t impute him the crude assessment, whatever he might wish to believe about his rival. Because he didn’t kill him last night. And because he looks a little sad when Peeta makes to pull away.

“Tonight then. I’ll be here… in case proceedings become too much.”

“In case?” Gale’s grip is surprisingly strong, when he means it to be. So is the hand that reels Peeta in and presses him into the chilled surface of the mirror. He doesn’t resist; he chooses not to.

***

Flirtation requires more subtlety than Gale is capable of forging on an empty stomach. He has only a vague idea of doing it before his mouth is kissing Peeta and his hands are gripping his narrow waist in an effort to hold him still. If he can only steal a moment or two to realign his thoughts, he’ll be able to leave this room and return to the unfinished tasks on his roster. There’s much to do and little time to finish preparations before the fatidic moment arrives; spending himself against a freckled thigh is not how he’s supposed to be passing the morning.

Men have gone to their deaths for lesser purpose.

Peeta makes sounds of pleasure and demand almost as soon as he’s convinced himself that this is really happening – again. Gale can’t fault him the momentary hesitation. In his position, he would be climbing the walls in search of escape, not allowing Gale to take liberties or invade his space and claim him like a woman. Except, of course, Gale has never claimed a woman with this level of thirst, like a single kiss can sate and save him both – and Peeta has always been the better man.

They find their way to the floor sooner than they do the bed and Peeta’s nails drag over his back as if in punishment. The inconvenience is considerable; Peeta had to share his blanket last night and now he’s expected to share his body heat, right here on the polished floors. He arches like a live wire – or a snake, at that – curling tight around Gale’s hips until it’s not about taking from him, but moving as he’s instructed, with the right pressure and the right speed to quench Peeta’s need. Anything less and Gale expects he’ll be the one stretched on his back, choking on shallow breaths as the distance between them fades to naught.

There was a towel at Peeta’s waist, at some point, though Gale can’t find the terrycloth when his hands dip over warm skin in an effort to drive himself a little closer. Instead, he takes grip on the hard column of flesh that is and isn’t just like his own, squeezing without hesitation. Yes, it’s another man’s prick. Yes, he’s debasing himself by doing to Peeta what Peeta did for him.

Yes, he’s enjoying the way his name forms on Peeta’s lips, the sound so frantic and the other man’s eyes wild and unfocused, as if he’s never been touched before. In this impossible incarnation, that’s probably true.

“What do you need?” Gale questions him. “What can I give you?” Outside of the things that really matter – freedom, purpose, absolution – Gale has an endless supply of promises. He’s been diligent not to pledge himself to the ghola in the past, but they’ve come to the crucible now and he can’t keep up the charade a moment longer. His mouth brushes over a damp patch of skin at Peeta’s throat, inhaling the scent of fragrant bath salts and cinnamon and something that’s undeniably male and _Peeta_. Something resolutely human.

Peeta fumbles with his tunic, visibly torn between trying to _get more_ out of Gale’s touch and fighting to reciprocate in kind; he’s always been the one who gives, who takes care of – who protects and mends broken things to full health again.

In the caves, a lifetime ago, Gale watched him fix a tear in the wind traps with needle and thread and a great deal of patience, at his post when the raiding parties set off to hunt and still there in the morning, as they returned with paltry game from an overturned caravan. When Gale asked why he’d persevered at a woman’s work, Peeta had said something about the garden below the sietch and scurried off to help his parents in the bakery.

A year later, when the windbreakers had broken under the force of powerful storms, Gale had begged off hunting to climb up and help with the dreary toil. His blanket had sheltered them both from the cold, while his fingers had learned the hard angles of another boy’s body.

His tunic is just as handy now, as Peeta presses his mouth to Gale’s temple to muffle a whimper. No one is there to see them, but still the other boy hides, and hides, and hides, demanding permission rather than letting himself go freely. His control gnaws at Gale’s own, frustration beading on his brow as he rubs him off, stroking his fingers around the smooth, bulbous head, the raised vein along the underside of his cock; trying every trick he knows to make this a pleasurable experience. And he must succeed, Gale thinks, or Peeta wouldn’t be thrashing like he is, bucking into careless, feverish strokes, until with a sharp keen, he goes stiff and comes.

Gale should be a lot more worried about being discovered like this, with the prisoner, than he is. From his vantage point at the foot of the bed, he can see that the door cracks a fraction then closes back just as quickly. No doubt the guards are satisfied that Gale is merely taking his due.

“Where are you doing?” Peeta is still dazed and exhausted by his orgasm, his voice wavering pathetically as Gale makes to pull away. There’s come on his tunic, a damp patch where his own erection is straining in his breeches. He wills it away with a huff of breath, wiping his hand on the towel Peeta used to dry himself. The other boy smiles up at him, his cheeks and chest flushed in a way that’s not quite pretty but doesn’t hurt the eyes, either.

It occurs to Gale that he asked for this. Without his prodding, Peeta wouldn’t be smiling lazily at the ceiling or propping himself against the bed to stand up sluggishly; he wouldn’t be beckoning Gale to come close and resume their most recent distraction.

And because he began this mess, Gale thinks it’s his task to end it. “I’ve work to see to.”

“Gale…” Gone is the drawn-out sound, the third syllable made up of the marriage between a moan and an order. Peeta’s eyes are sharp as they focus on him, his mouth curving down in aggravation. Months ago, Gale would have called his intelligence a dangerous, threatening weapon. He still fears it, but his reasons have changed into something he scarcely understands without guilt and urgency swaying above his head.

A hand waves off whatever challenge Peeta is fashioning under that thin veneer of confusion. “You’ll need another bath.” He means the remark to hit home, though the insult is far too thin and he seems to have lost any ability to wind up the ghola.

Later, as he waits for the imperial convoy to descend from the hovercraft, he wonders if the problem lies with him or with Peeta. There’s a distinct possibility that the ghola is learning, adapting to the world around him like any chameleon. He has a lifetime’s supply of memories and the benefit of Tleilaxu engineering keeping him abreast of paltry human weakness. Who better to manipulate the Regent’s inner circle than the guileless victim who doesn’t know what he’s doing? He’s the ideal patsy in an intergalactic game of risk and subterfuge.

By the time Katniss and Prim have touched down onto the tarmac, Gale is mostly convinced of this new development and takes Katniss aside to confess his thoughts.

“You think he’s safe, then?” She’s tired from the journey and the month-long celebration, but she hasn’t given up yet and Peeta is too important for the conversation to be postponed. Wisps of hair have broken free from her ponytail to hang into her eyes as she speaks. Gale contains his desire to reach out and brush them behind her ear.

“I don’t think he means any harm. I’ve spent weeks with him,” at Katniss’ instruction, though she couldn’t have meant for Gale to sleep with the ghola, “and he seems perfectly controlled. There are pieces of memory missing, true, and he’s had a few angry episodes, but the Tleilaxu warned of the modifications made. Given the circumstances, it’s more humane treatment than I would’ve expected from that race.”

The Regent’s eyes are full as she scans the rooftops. From where she stands at the edge of the landing field, she’s high above the world yet tethered to its problems. It’s common for Gale to find himself excluded from that penetrating glare; he’s never been enough of a problem to require her attention.

A sigh filters over the hum of engines. “I will convene the council, then, and have this finished once and for all.”

“Would you allow me?” Gale bites his tongue against offering an excuse. Katniss is preoccupied with bigger things, she is about to lose her crown and Gale has no intention of adding to her burdens. Yet to tell her of his plans is to jeopardize any chance of success. He has no doubt as to the fairness of her judgment, but Katniss has long ceased acting in her own name.

Approval is given with a shrug. “Suit yourself. The coronation is a sundown. By the way… your boots want for a shine, Soldier Hawthorne.”

Gale waits until he’s alone to glance at the opaque spatter turning the leather to a darker shade of brown. It could be anything, he tells himself, and there’s no reason for that detail to make him think of Peeta.

***

This could be what Gale does; now that Peeta has shown himself as a willing participant, the Regent’s loyal lackey can pretend there’s nothing twisted about keeping him in suspended animation. It wouldn’t be the first time power was abused in the keeping of lovers – Arrakeen was once full of promises of a specific sort for the boys and girls fortunate enough to survive the arena. No reason why death should spare Peeta the sequestration and abuse once weathered by his comrades.

Yet while he’s had plenty of the former, the latter is still eminently lacking. Gale hasn’t tried his hand at causing pain so far and he doesn’t seem to believe in torture as a viable means of interrogation. He could hurt Peeta and be well within his mandate while doing so. That he hasn’t makes figuring out his intentions that much harder.

 _Concentrate,_ bellows Johanna Mason somewhere in the labyrinth of Peeta’s memories, snapping her stick against his back in an effort to refocus his attention. He’s on the floor, knees folded neatly under him as he prepares to delve back into himself, but his thoughts keep flowing outward, reaching out over the sheets to where Gale slept last night. Sheets that have long cooled, that is, though the pillow still smells like him. So does Peeta’s skin.

He showered again, as instructed, but taking orders rankles after what they’ve shared. Assuming Gale hasn’t lost his native sense of honor, he can’t truly be content to let things lie as they have. Katniss will come back soon, if she hasn’t already, and hiding this from her is duplicitous in a way that has nothing to do with sex or lust. Or even love.

Peeta’s eyes snap to the door on a hiss, but it’s only lunch. His servant today is a thin boy with feathers in his braided hair. There’s nothing remarkable about his dress or downcast eyes, yet in his hands he bears no loaded tray.

Maybe they mean to starve him to death as punishment for sleeping with his jailer.

“The Regent requests your presence for the afternoon council,” announces the boy, “I am to help you prepare.”

He can’t know why Peeta’s knees immediately turn to jelly, but he’s helpful enough in gathering him up off the floor. Starvation would be preferable to this. “I’m not ready,” Peeta insists, “can’t you tell her that? I’m not ready.” He’s waited months for this moment, convinced of his own innocence and clamoring for his release, but now that it has arrived, Peeta’s thoughts fly to Gale and the things he’s said, the pieces of the puzzle that have been dredged up from blocked memory only to smack dully into their counterparts. Doubt has a way of living a long, healthy life if fostered in the right conditions – and that’s what Gale has been doing these many weeks.

Peeta feels manipulated, used and, worst of all, abandoned. Why hasn’t Gale come to tell him this? For months, they’ve been along together, talking, sitting, playing verbal tennis and physical sport, and now that Peeta needs him most, the other man is nowhere to be seen.

In his place, a wisp of a boy helps Peeta to the bed and produces a comb from his white vest. He has gentle hands, at least, and his sparing touch doesn’t return once Peeta has been arranged in a certain position. Under his care, the prisoner becomes a pale shadow of his former self, close enough to appear unchanged but not enough to be called classically handsome. Gale has the monopoly on virile manhood.

“Finished,” declares the servant, a sliver of pride in his voice. “Guards will collect you presently.”

Peeta has been in the palace long enough that he no longer inspires fear in the staff. Abomination or not, they handle him like a magnified thorn imbedded below the skin. Occasionally it’s worth worrying the wound, but most often they leave him be. Today isn’t one of those days.

The bodyguards are Fremen and far too glad to be rid of him. They clamp shigawire bonds around his wrists and march him via the most public route to destination. Visitors and guests waiting anxiously for the coronation to begin give them a wide berth. Their glares accompany Peeta on his journey, like rotten vegetables tossed at a convict on his way to the gallows. It’s expected that he’ll wind up in the throne room in some pathetic mimicry of his first arrival to Arrakeen, but the orders given to his guards must differ.

Up carved marble stairs and down long corridors, Peeta begins to see the scenery change around him. There are far fewer people the higher they go and only a handful of guards on patrol cross their path. No words are exchanged, so it’s impossible to glean where he’s being taken.

Too soon, the party pauses behind a tall, carved door and ushers him inside without following suit. Peeta anticipates dour faces and a tribunal overfull with his enemies. Even antiquated gallows would fit the pulse racing in his veins.

“Peeta? What—how did you get here?” Prim has never looked more beautiful. Her dress is black and long, like a wedding gown fit for the desert. There are no ornate combs holding up her hair, and no jewelry, so Peeta can see her bare back mirrored in the glass behind her through streaks of auburn hair.

These are the imperial chambers. And Peeta is alone with the soon-to-be Empress.

“I’m supposed to be meeting the council,” he reports, frozen in place where he stands. “Katniss called me to attend their gathering before the coronation.” And instead, the guards brought him here. Into Prim’s quarters. Where she waits alone – No. That’s wrong. A pair of feet peeks from behind the table, the white socks and the compact shoes as part of the uniform as the cowl of the cloak. Peeta frowns. “Who else is with you?”

Prim bristles at the question, her chin jutting out so that height and haughtiness become one and the same. “That’s none of your concern. I don’t know why you’re here. It must be some mistake, there’s no council meeting or I would be attending—“

“But you’re not Empress _yet_ ,” corrects the figure behind the mirror. She has been Peeta’s companion this past week, as cross in life as she is in his memories. Johanna Mason pulls herself up from the vanity on huffed laughter and frustration. “You’re just a silly girl with delusions of grandeur. Even your sister can see how ill-suited you are for the crown.”

A flash of red light catches on her robes and vanishes just as quickly. Peeta can’t look away long enough to trace its origin. He stands, transfixed, in witness to what could be a domestic scene of the strangest sort.

“Why are you speaking to me like this?” Prim’s voice is steady, but her fists have locked tight at her sides, as if she’s spoiling for a fight. “I’ve done nothing to deserve such hurtful language.” Except be the embodiment of the Sisterhood’s every ploy for the last thousand years – and every legend needs its martyr.

Peeta makes to take a step forward and place himself between Prim and what’s fast shaping out to be an imminent threat only to find his feet rooted to the floor. He tries again, his fear sparking into anger. “What – I can’t move. What did you do, witch?”

This has to be her doing, else Johanna wouldn’t be smiling with the same glee. “I triggered your most important sub-routine,” she offers thinly. In her hand is a small remote, like the kind used to generate a frequency pulse to attract sandworms. It doesn’t have the makings of Bene Gesserit technology, but then they can’t be working alone if they know how to control a ghola.

Peeta bites down hard. “Prim. Run.”

Pale eyes shift to him, uncomprehending. “Peeta—“

“Now! Get out of here, run!” He’s shouting and the guards should be breaking down the door to come to the Empress’ aid, but nobody is listening, nobody cares and Peeta has a sudden, sinking feeling that he knows exactly where this is going. Every wasted moment up to this point has been part of a greater whole. “You’re in cahoots with the Bene Tleilax.” Johanna Mason might as well break out her shiny cane; Peeta feels utterly sure of his conclusion.

And still Prim stays, having taken a few steps back toward the window from which she can neither leap nor fall. “The Sisterhood doesn’t work with the Tleilaxu; why would you? You despise their methods, you even said it was a sin to—“

“Oh, wake up!” Johanna sends the vanity crashing to the floor with a sharp, clattering noise. Mirrors shatter – seven years bad luck, if Peeta remembers rightly – and perfume bottles fill the air with a sweet-sickly scent that’s neither natural, nor artificial. It just is, like Peeta. Like a ghola. “Your sister,” and Johanna might as well spit out the Regent’s name, “has collared every Great House in the known universe! She’s put the rabble of the sands above philosophers and strategists, above educated men and women whose only sin has been to profit from their own intelligence. She hoards spice-mélange as though it’s her own private treasure, forcing us into deeper debt and sacrifice and threatening to impose garrisons on our planet strongholds unless we pay proper tribute. Your kind is a parasite, growing like a cancer on the face of Arrakis—”

“—and you’re here to finish her.” Peeta feels sweat drip from his neatly combed hair into his shirt collar. Every muscle is coiled, but the more he strains and the less he seems to make any progress. The shigawire bonds aren’t helping, either, but he feels numb to that pain. All he can think of is getting to Prim, protecting the Regent’s sister.

It’s what Gale would do, if Gale were ever to find himself immobilized by Johanna’s crafty tricks and chilling smile. She arches her brow as she waits for the penny to drop. “You haven’t figured it out yet, have you? _I_ am not here to do anything except survive a horrible ordeal. _You_ , on the other hand…” A thin pistol crawls from her sleeve into the cradle of a highly precise fist. “You’re about to kill the Empress.”

Prim does run, then, but it’s already too late. Johanna trips her without expending any effort, as exact in the placement of her foot at Prim’s ankle as she is in pulling her up by the hair. “Don’t snivel,” she drawls, “you’ll ruin all the work I did fixing your make-up.”

“Let her go—“ Peeta jerks against his bonds, the movement infinitesimal but present, like a soft whisper in a crowded room. “I won’t do it. You can’t convince me—“

The feeble whimper that echoes from the floor is the result of Johanna’s foot in Prim’s belly. She kicks viciously and the blow connects, keeping its victim down for precious moments. It’s to be expected; Prim isn’t used to pain, not like this, and she can’t know how to work with the hurt rather than against it. The more she tenses, the more she must hurt, like Peeta’s arms when the shigawire tightens around his wrists in short-lived punishment.

Johanna is too close, her voice too loud as she grips his right fist and props the gun between his fingers. “I don’t need to compel you. I just need to angle your hand and help you squeeze the trigger. That way, when the Regent’s dog interrogates me, I’ll be able to swear before any court and god that I saw you murder in cold blood the embodiment of all our prayers.”

“You’ll be starting a civil war.” Peeta flounders for a way to delay the inevitable, his chest tight to bursting and his head pounding with the thrum of adrenaline. “Think of what you’re setting in motion—“

“Do you think we haven’t? Ten years it took us to piece you back together; the perfect Trojan horse into which to conceal a weapon. We knew Katniss Everdeen wouldn’t be able to kill you, so we prevaricated. We made demands. She thrilled in defying our counsel while keeping you in the palace, where disgust at her weakness could foment week upon weak. What do you think the people will have to say about this tragedy? That it couldn’t have been prevented? That the Regent took every precaution to protect our holy Empress? Or that she let her heart deceive her into a gross miscalculation?”

Johanna’s hand is a warm weight on Peeta’s shoulder, yet sooner than ground him, it makes Peeta think of every time her stick smacked into his hips and spine and head; every piece of advice she ever gave him.

 _Concentrate,_ she used to tell him. _Pay attention to your breathing._ It’s hard to do when a gun is thrust into his hand and his fingers instructed to fire, but Peeta has nothing to lose for trying. If he only he could tip the angle a little so the poison-projectile bounced off the floor, then he might buy Prim the time she needs to make her escape. He pictures her running down sand-swept corridors, darting in and out of view down long, narrow stairs that go up and down and up again, always in the same direction, always driving them closer to the howling wind and the laughter of boys at the edge of the only life they’ve ever known.

He’d been sewing the wind trap together when it happened; a warm gust full of crackling electricity and then the kiss, Gale standing back quickly as if expecting the burden of punch in retribution. Peeta had caught his arm to keep him from tumbling into the abyss – or worse, ruining his stitching – and somehow found himself kissing him again, properly, like he’s seen his older brothers do with girls behind the bakery when they think no one is looking.

It hadn’t occurred to him that it was a dangerous thing to do until he announced to his mother that he was going to marry Gale someday. The bruises hadn’t faded for weeks, but the worst of it was the sting of his pride whenever Gale’s father drifted past, son in tow, and regarded him with the sort of disdain best reserved for desert waste.

“Abomination,” Peeta’s mother had gritted out between her teeth. “You’ve shamed us all, you unnatural creature. The gods will punish you for this.”

And the gods had. Years later, in the arena, as he stood to choose between his life and that of Gale’s sweetheart, Peeta had made the simplest trade of all: his life for hers. His gruesome death for her imperfect salvation.

All this comes pouring out the moment that Johanna presents Peeta with another life-altering choice, her fingers threaded through his around the hilt of the dart-gun as she positions it for a single. One stab of the projectile and poison will no doubt flood Prim’s bloodstream, killing her instantly; the Bene Gesserit aren’t keen on taking chances. They’ve planned for this for ten years, editing out the parts of Peeta that they didn’t like and leaving only the collective illusion of a thwarted affair. Their only failure is in sending another victor of the arena to steady his suddenly wavering fist. He’s seen Johanna move; he knows what she can do.

“Just shoot,” encourages the Reverend Mother with all the wisdom of a teacher, “and this will all be over.” It’s good advice.

Peeta draws in a sharp breath and times his movements to that of the pressure of a thin finger upon the trigger. The dart ricochets just as he twists, snapping Johanna’s twice-broken wrist into permanent disuse. There is no time for second-guessing. An elbow to the solar plexus shoves her out of reach of Prim, her feet tangling in her nun’s habit as she falls to the ground.

Surprise is not enough to stall the six consecutive shots which pin her to the floor.

Eight seconds later, the doors to the Empress’ quarters burst open to the shouting of guards and acolytes and Prim’s own frantic sister. Peeta is found with dart gun in hand and a dead Reverend Mother at his feet.

The only face in the crowd not to revel in shock is Gale’s, who has let himself in through a portal concealed between door and window. His hands are nowhere near his crysknife.

***

 **Epilogue**

Thin leather sails are strewn upon the ground, blanketing bed, stove and the chest where Gale keeps his riding hooks. The electric storm had left a gash about six inches long down the center of the fabric, but delays and clumsy manipulations have widened the gap so it’s now a foot bigger than Gale remembers. He judges by the size of the tear that mending it will take time and thread far thicker than what they have in the sietch – but he’s been wrong before. As some seek to remind him whenever his stillsuit rips at the sleeve or his breeches split in haste and foolishness, mending is not his strongest skill.

With no hope of stowing the hooks in their proper place, Gale leaves them just inside the beaded door curtain and strips to the skin. He would wash, but the cistern is hidden away somewhere under the canopy and he can’t find reason enough to dislodge the unfurled material. Thankfully, at least, his clothes are in the chest by the door, where he can easily retrieve them to protect what little modesty he has left.

“Hello.” A female voice in the doorway makes Gale shoot up quickly, his hands hastily drawing down his shirt. His city customs are proving hard to forget, whatever preference Gale may hold for the easy manners of sietch life. Thankfully, his new neighbors find such hang-ups fascinating and a little quaint. They don’t mind that he’s different, as long as he respects their ways. “I thought I saw you come in. The trek went well, then, did it?” Her smile is bright, inviting. “We’re making merry tonight. You’re welcome to come.”

Gale thanks her. “I might,” he offers judiciously, “if I can find the smokepipe under this mess.” It’s customary to bring instruments or drink to a gathering in the sietch, but Gale has neither. The smokepipe isn’t really his to lend, either, though he shares a bed with its owner.

“Don’t trouble yourself,” advises his – friend. “Just bring the storyteller.”

And there it is. Beyond any possession or skill that’s in his power to offer, Gale has earned respect and admiration for the crafty sage he brought with him to the desert. It wasn’t the plan, but life seldom works out as anticipated.

He leaves behind the cold stone walls to trudge through sand-streaked corridors and crowded chambers. With the raiders come back, the sietch is full of laughter and relief, men and women showering their loved ones with affection for a job well done. The occasional moan from behind beaded curtains sends a flush through Gale’s cheeks – this, too, is something to get used to after ten years in Arrakeen – but there’s no room to linger on the vibration in unfamiliar voices as he breaks surface. Of the many hideouts in the sietch, Gale knows to check the market first.

It’s among crowded stalls and children playing in the dirt, that he finds what he’s looking for.

His blonde head gives him away in a land where almost everyone is dark-skinned and raven-haired, but it’s the stories he weaves with hands and tongue that make him so unforgettable. Sometimes, Gale thinks he’s merely tolerated for being friend and companion to the stranger from another world. But then those blue-in-blue eyes shift to him, a wide mouth fixing into a smile Gale wants to kiss away, if not preserve in amber – and he forgets.

“You’re back,” he’s told as he straddles the wooden bench upon which women, and the occasional man, sit to stir clay pots and chat about their day.

Gale dips his finger into a stick piece of dough and pulls it back when swatted with a wooden spoon. He’s fast enough to dance out of range, but he relishes the thought of capture. “I caught a good worm,” he confirms, licking the bittersweet taste of flour from the digit. It’s thrilling to see the gesture followed by a lover’s gaze. “What happened to our dwelling? Have you decided to take the windbreakers hostage until further notice?”

“I wanted for work space.” The answer is wholly unapologetic. Gale appreciates the honesty, the sense of trust that follows from making one’s own decisions and knowing they’ll impact another. They’re learning every day, adjusting the boundaries of their new life as they go. Mostly, they get it right.

Forgiveness is hard enough to earn without arguments and fiery words.

“I should think you’ll be wanting for sleep space in a few hours,” Gale shoots back, reclining tired muscles against the wooden bench. “Or are we to sleep on top of the tarp?”

If their neighbors wonder at their arrangement, it’s never publicly admitted. Gale expected eyebrows to be raised when they first arrived. For the first month, he slept with one eye open, constantly dreading judgment or betrayal. With none forthcoming, he’s come to question his memory of what is permissible in the desert – a new fixation he sometimes thinks he’s caught by osmosis. They play it safe because it’s easy and the demands of sietch life don’t allow for effusive passion at the end of the day.

It’s only when the moons are high and round, and no raiding planned by the sietch elders, that Gale leads them out into the desert. He remembers this from childhood; men and women bound by love and in possession of their parents’ blessing, departing for time alone between the dunes. And if two men happen to do it instead, at least the whispers of ‘abomination’ are kept far from Gale’s ears.

“You worry too much.”

Gale can’t dispute the sentiment. He shrugs again, his foot sliding under the bench to curl around a strong, tanned calf. City pallor is the first to go here, in the desert. “It’s how I pass the time.” With no guards to train and no fear of being chased by imperial scouts, Gale’s mind is often unoccupied; he operates well when on raids, but the riding of sandworms relies on muscle memory alone. His thoughts fly, drift and catch on all sorts of branches. Most reach out to the bed he’s left empty, the warm, broad back he can’t touch as he falls asleep on rocky outcroppings.

A few wisps of longing travel back to Arrakeen, where the Empress has long given orders to have her would-be assassins executed for treason against the crown. He doesn’t miss the palace or its deceitful residents, but it’s human to wonder. Could he have done better to expose the coup? Could he have spared the pawn and saved the empress in the same fell swoop?

The truth is that he played fast and loose when it mattered most; risks that seemed acceptable then shine like beacons of doubt under the glare of hindsight. But to regret is to wish for a different outcome and Gale doesn’t. Not for a moment.

Challenging the mold has been the main driver in their relationship since its shaky beginnings, so Gale is hardly surprised to see talented hands return the bowl to one of the women working nearby, with instructions on what to do next to make the bread rise. The grip around his wrist is dusted with white, but its heat comes from deep within. His smile, Gale thinks, might as well be sunlight. “Let’s see if I can’t change your mind.”

The Empress may have ordered Peeta to be put down for his part in the crime engineered against her, but she has done nothing to enforce the edict. The armies Gale once trained are now engaged in war with the true culprits. For this, Gale feels thankful.

He is equally grateful for the hands that close around his shoulders and cradle him in a tight embrace when the hubbub of the sietch has faded to a dull hum. “I can taste the desert,” Peeta tells him later, his body draped over Gale’s back, under the coarse leather of the canopy, “on your skin.”

“It’s the spice-mélange,” Gale reports, pillowing his head upon his arms because he can’t hold himself up and speak all at the same time. They ride out in groups and harvest it fresh from the sands, before Arrakeen can send workers to collect what’s left. They use it for cooking rather commerce.

But Peeta shakes his head, damp bangs rubbing lazily against Gale’s shoulder. “It’s freedom.”

The sietch is alight with laughter and merrymaking that night, young raiders fresh from their first trek rubbing shoulders with seasoned old-timers indulging their sons in celebration. Drink pours from gourds into wide-rimmed cups that bear the defects of handmade pottery, and from there into mouths made thirsty and spirited by the night. Equally handmade is the effervescent music, as fingers pluck strings and dance upon tight drums, stumbling over a noisy, imperfect rhythm. Warm bread rolls so soft that they melt on the tongue disappear off plates before revelers have had the chance to wonder at their provenance.

Curiously absent is the heavy smoke of a spice pipe and the wild imaginings so often unleashed in the foreign cadence of a man’s voice while his older companion sits, on a nearby stool, and sometimes clasps his hand to a freckled knee.

Their names are never spoken.


End file.
